The project Electrical Power and Energy Vectors from Renewable Sources - FLEXILAB of the Department of Materials Science of the University of Milano – Bicocca is funded by the “Fondo per il finanziamento dei dipartimenti universitari di eccellenza – D.L. n.232 del 11/12/2016, Vol I, Commi 314-338”. Such competitive funding from the Italian Government was granted to the best 180 Italian Departments (807  in total) by means of a selection based on the Department productivity and the quality of a development project. The Department of Materials Science  resulted among the best 11 in the area of Chemical Sciences. The total cost of FLEXILAB is 10.700.000 € with a direct funding from MIUR of 6.500.000 €. FLEXILAB has the ambition to constitute a Departmental Laboratory, open to collaboration with external stakeholders, on materials for a sustainable energy cycle.

The FLEXILAB project aims to make the Department a reference center in the development of sustainable energy materials and technologies through its value cycle. The Department can play a leading role, merging existing skills with others to be acquired. Energy supply with sustainable methods is a theme of great social impact. Recent data show that there is not a single successful technology capable of coping alone with the global energy problem, but rather a complex set of interdependent solutions aimed at both power generation and distributed networks. The project, fully in line with the priorities indicated by the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) dedicated to the development of technologies with low CO₂ emissions, will allow efficient and effective development of basic know-how and derived technologies, as well as training qualified researchers.