Dr. Philippe Schild is a senior expert in the unit responsible for clean energy transitions in the directorate general for research and innovation of the European Commission.
He obtained his PhD in plasma physics at the University Joseph Fourier in Grenoble (France) in 1989. He started his carrier as a scientist at the European fusion tokamak experiment, the Joint European Torus (JET). He joined the Directorate General Research and Innovation in 1998, when he started working in the areas of renewable energy technologies. He is contributing to the development of the EU research work programme, to the selection of research projects and their monitoring. His expertise covers the areas of concentrated solar power, photovoltaics, ocean energy and bioenergy. He is now following emerging energy technologies such as solar conversion from artificial photosynthesis.
He has been involved in international cooperation from the early time of his carrier. He represented the European Commission in different Technology Collaboration Programmes (TCP) of the International Energy Agency (IEA). He is a co-lead of the Innovation Community “Sunlight to X” of in Mission Innovation. He is also co-leading the development of a research collaboration programme between the EU and Africa in the area of renewable energy under the framework of Climate Change and Sustainable Energy (CCSE) partnership created under the EU-AU (African Union) High Level Policy Dialogue on Science, Technology and Innovation.