Eni collaborates on developing fusion energy

Eni has signed a collaborative framework agreement with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) to study the development of fusion energy, the Italian energy giant announced on Thursday.

The agreement involves building a commercially active facility dubbed ARC and includes operational and technological support, technological development and project execution.

In 2021, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spin-out successfully tested its high-temperature superconducting magnet confinement technology.

Construction of the world’s first magnetic confinement working facility dubbed SPARC is underway and is expected to be operational in 2025.

Eni invested in CFS in 2018.

“We will see the first CFS power plant based on magnetic confinement fusion at the beginning of the next decade, with then almost two decades ahead to deploy the technology and achieve the energy transition goals by 2050,” said Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni.

“Having this technology at the industrial level, providing large quantities of zero carbon energy produced in a safe, clean and virtually inexhaustible way, will mean that we will contribute substantially to the energy transition challenge.”