Description of Challenge:

The Energy industry has been under intense market pressure and technological challenges both for non-renewable and renewable energies; although fossil fuels continue being the main energy generation vector, a remarkable expansion of renewable energies is occurring around the world caused either by the concern with energy safety or the risk of global warming. In the oil and gas industry the discovery of exploratory fields in deep waters and zones of difficult extraction has been pointing out new challenges such as qualification of specialized labor and investment in wells technologies and surface processing. On the other hand, the expansion of renewable energies in the world represents a new era in the energy sector; the integration of unconventional renewable energies in the generating facilities – intermittent sources such as solar and wind – their storage and distribution in smart grids are a few examples that may significantly affect the production, distribution and consumption of energy in the country as well as reducing the use of more polluting sources such as fossil fuel powered plants.

Opportunities for Startups:

• » Technologies for increase of oil production and market competitiveness;
• » New systems for management, assessment and minimization of environmental impacts (biota and water quality) and on society;
• » Solutions for improvement in the chain infrastructure (e.g. logistics, refineries modernization);
• » Technologies for new exploratory frontiers, advanced oil recovery and operation in ultra-deep waters;
• » Solutions for higher professional qualification focusing on Engineering, Geology and related areas;
• » Solutions and equipment for workers’ better protection;
• » New methodologies for validation / testing of materials in high depths (example: anticorrosion protection);
• » Technologies for CO2 capture, separation and injection, water management and injection and energy efficiency;
• » HPC (High-Performance Computing) with development of sensors, simulators, algorithms and others. (Example: new software that would better represent the rocks behavior during flow of oil and gas and providing knowledge of effects on the reservoirs at the time of injection of contaminant gases such as CO2 and SO4 and water);
• » Systems in subsea factory so that the platform operations are transferred to the seabed;
• » New flow assurance systems and equipment aiming to increase the knowledge, prediction and assurance of subsea production;
• » Technologies of association of oil with biofuels.
• » Replacements for oil (ethanol, biodiesel, biobutanol, dimethyl ether, coal for liquids, bituminous sands, bituminous shale) from biomass and raw material fossils;
• » Alternatives for electric energy generation including energy storage technologies (wind power, thermal solar energy, photo-voltaic solar energy, tide energy, biomass, fuel cells, and batteries).
• » Solutions for generation, storage and consumption of energy in minor and major scale (example: photo-voltaic panels, micro-turbines or fuel cells)
• » Solutions for the energy market (wholesale, retail and commerce): balancing of energy demand and supply and thus collection and forwarding of information on supply and demand to generation domains, services providers and operation of smart grids
• » TIC solutions to meet energy management, measurement methodologies; operational security and impacts on the energy quality in micro-networks, smart-grid environments
• » Solutions of communications between utilities companies and consumers on the information of measurement, control and operation of power grid.