In face of the inevitable climate change reality, all concerned are taking the necessary steps to mitigate the associated severity. In this context, the European Union (EU) has recently revised its medium- (2030) and long-term (2050) climate targets. Accordingly, the EU- member states are now aiming to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 by at least 55% from their 1990 levels, and reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Achieving this target requires intensive research exploring and designing different energy options by adopting renewable technologies.

With this understanding, academics from Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology (AUST), Fodazione Bruno Kassler (FBK), University of Trento (UniTn), and Sonatrach Raffineria Italiana (SRI) of Italy, and Aalborg University (AAU) of Denmark have joined in a collaborative effort to plan the transition scenarios for the years 2030 and 2050 for a refinery (Sonatrach Raffineria Italiana) located in the south of Italy. It will see an application of the framework that Dr. Md Shahriar Mahbub (Professor, Department of CSE, AUST) developed during his PhD work. The research findings have been published in a paper titled “A multi- objective optimization approach in defining the decarbonisation strategy of a refinery” at the International Conference on Smart Energy Systems (https://smartenergysystems.eu) held in September 2021 in Denmark (abstract). The paper will be published in an Elsevier Journal. The FBK website (https://energy.fbk.eu/fbk-sri) published news on the collaboration.