TRANSIENCE Basque regional workshop

On 18 March 2026, our TECNALIA colleagues hosted the second Basque Regional Workshop at their organisation headquarters in Zamudio, bringing together key stakeholders from sectoral industry clusters, representatives from Basque Government agencies, public and private universities, and national-level transmission system operators. 

The workshop focused on validating and illustrating the application of the Forecast-Sites model—a MIC3 module developed by Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI—to the region's cement, glass, and paper sectors, to explore multiple transformation pathways and assess sector-specific barriers (including but not limited to electrification needs and grid expansion, expected impacts from EU policies, and the potential role of biogas/biomethane, hydrogen, and CO₂ capture, transport, storage, and use). 

Across industries, several cross‑cutting needs emerged including exploring the potential of circularity and new business model transformation, evaluating existing plant retrofit solutions, guiding more systematic strategic network analyses (e.g., electricity, hydrogen, CO₂) as well as considering uncertainty in terms of robust input assumptions on electricity, natural gas, and CO₂ prices. These insights reinforce the importance of our continuous collaboration with relevant stakeholders towards the development of the project's fully open-source model framework (MIC3) for assessing industrial circularity, decarbonisation, and sustainability.