- Client: Fusion for Energy
- Implementation period: April, 2025 - November, 2025 (Completed)
- Geographic coverage: European Union
- Theme: Energy, Energy Infrastructure & Systems, Energy innovation & supply chain, Renewable and Low-carbon Energy
- Topic: Comparative Analysis, Competitiveness analysis, F4E, Fusion, ITER, SWOT
- Experts: Matthew Smith, Andrea Finesso, Csinszka Bene, Private: Shashwati Shankar
This study for F4E provided a socio-economic and broader assessment of the impact of F4E spending in the most recent years. Updating and building upon earlier studies in 2017 (by Trinomics) and 2019.
The study was led by CSIL, with Trinomics and Cambridge Econometrics providing significant support to the research and analysis.
The work used multiple research methods to examine the various dimensions of impact of F4E spending. F4E spending runs to hundreds of millions of euros per year and is primarily towards providing the European contribution to the construction of the ITER experimental fusion reactor in southern France, i.e. the construction of key buildings, fabrication and assembly of key compenents, provision of key materials, services and research.
The study assessed the macro-economic impact of this spending by allocating the spending on the contributions to the most relevant economic sectors and carrying out econometric modelling of these flows to determine the economic impacts, both in isolation and in comparison to other spending scenarios. These each showed a net benefit in GVA and jobs.
Broader benefits were explored through bibliometric analysis of the quality of scientific outputs, comparative analysis of procedures compared to peers such as CERN and ESA, microeconometric analysis of company data, case studies of innovative companies, interviews with key stakeholders, SWOTs for competitiveness analysis of specific fusion components and surveys of F4E suppliers. This analysis highlighted the various benefits to innovation and competitiveness of the work funded by F4E but also some of the challenges that are still faced.
The results are being used to support Fusion for Energy and the European Commission in discussions and negotiations for the next funding period (MFF 2028-2035).
