Eni pushes for clean, safe and practically inexhaustible fusion energy . And it signs a new collaboration agreement with Commonwealth Fusion System , a spin-out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which also boasts Bill Gates among its supporters.

The agreement strengthens the partnership between Eni and CFS, in which the Italian giant invested for the first time in 2018 and of which it is the second largest shareholder after the founders.

Of Commonwealth Fusion System "we are not only a financial shareholder, we make our experience in project management available", said the managing director of Eni Claudio Descalzi on the sidelines of the signing of the new agreement alongside the CEO of CFS Bob Mumgaard, who he called the merger a "game changer." An analysis shared by Descalzi: it is an "epochal turning point" with profound geopolitical impacts .

THE PROJECT – With fusion, "there would be no more blackmail" of energy: energy "would no longer be a problem or a cause of war", he added, observing how, in the future, fusion energy could replace oil .

The "dream project has become a firm belief that it can come true", he highlighted, explaining how the investment made by Eni goes beyond just the economic value, "the capital gain that can be made. The focus is on getting to produce this energy, not how much money to make. To make fusion a reality is the most exciting thing there could be. If I manage to get to this during my profession, it will erase everything else ».

The merger will help "break the monopoly on the sun" and contribute to the fight against climate change, Mumgaard said. This strategic agreement aims to accelerate progress on the merger."

Eni was the first to recognize that the merger could have made a difference . Cfs aims to speed up the industrial application of the energy born from magnetic confinement fusion, which reproduces the principles through which the Sun generates its energy and which occupies a strategic role in the road to decarbonisation. CFS has taken the fastest path to commercialization of fusion energy. In September 2021 it reached an important milestone with the successful test of a magnet with va HTS (High Temperature Superconductors) technology, the most powerful magnet of its kind in the world, which will ensure the confinement of the plasma in the magnetic fusion process and which will contribute to the achievement of net fusion energy in a future demonstration plant.

The path undertaken with the support of Eni is characterized by a pragmatic and progressive approach aimed at obtaining the industrial application of magnetic confinement fusion technology in the next decade . SPARC, which aims to be the world's first magnetic confinement pilot plant producing net fusion energy, is under construction and will be operational by 2025. SPARC will in turn serve as a testbed for the development of ARC: the first Grid-capable industrial fusion power plant, expected to be operational in the early 2030s.

(Unioneonline/vl)

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