FACET: an exceptional partnership, co-led by UGA

Behind this selection lies a rare framework. Launched in December 2023, the French-Australian Centre for Energy Transition, FACET, is a flagship strategic platform, backed by the French and Australian governments and Ministries of Foreign Affairs. Its mission: to accelerate cooperation between the two countries on the major challenges of the energy transition, from critical minerals and hydrogen to smart grids and synthetic fuels.

What makes it a singular initiative is its architecture. FACET is co-led by the CEA, Swinburne University of Technology, which hosts it in Melbourne, and Université Grenoble Alpes, and operates across three complementary strands: research, training, and innovation. UGA does not play a symbolic role here: it is a co-architect of the centre, involved in its governance and in shaping its bilateral industrial research projects.

It is within this framework of excellence that the Climate 4.0 Hub was conceived. Carried by FACET and led by Swinburne University, it offers selected start-ups privileged access to Australian industry players, investors, research centres, and innovation actors over five months, based on the Melbourne campus. The aim: five months of immersion to assess, with no obligation, whether Australia represents a genuine opportunity for their development.

A founding cohort equal to the ambition

The six selected start-ups form a remarkably cohesive cohort, covering the full spectrum of decarbonisation challenges:

• Amplicity: transforming industrial batteries into intelligent energy assets for grid flexibility
• BeeZ FM: artificial intelligence solutions to optimise energy performance and accelerate the decarbonisation of buildings
• Chlynn: innovative technologies for the decarbonisation of industrial processes
• Storabelle: molten-salt thermal storage to valorise renewable energy
• Sollys Energy: deployment and optimisation of renewable energy projects through advanced digital tools
• ROSI Solar: advanced recycling of photovoltaic panels and recovery of critical materials

Six companies, six distinct technological responses to the same challenge. A selection that illustrates the breadth and maturity of the French GreenTech ecosystem.

ROSI Solar: a UGA deeptech company on a world stage

It is within this exceptional environment that ROSI Solar takes its place. Founded in 2017, spun out of SATT Linksium and University of Grenoble-Alpes (UGA) through the SIMaP laboratory of the UGA and the CNRS, with Grenoble INP-UGA as an associated supervisory bodyy, the company has developed a process unique in the world: the selective recycling of photovoltaic panels to recover, from the active layer of the cells, silver, copper, and high-purity silicon, critical, strategic materials that no other company in the world is able to extract at industrial scale.

Since the inauguration of its first plant in Isère, with a processing capacity of 10,000 tonnes per year, ROSI Solar has established itself as a reference player in the photovoltaic circular economy. Its selection for the Climate 4.0 Hub opens a new horizon: the Australian market, a continent of exceptional sunshine, whose energy transition is accelerating and whose need for photovoltaic panel recycling will grow dramatically in the years ahead. At the end of the five-month programme, ROSI Solar will have all the elements needed to assess whether establishing a presence in Australia represents the next step in its development.

The hallmark of an ecosystem

ROSI Solar's selection is not merely a company achievement. It is a sign of the vitality of a territory and the strength of a model: the one that the Université Grenoble Alpes has embodied for decades, where fundamental research, technology transfer, talent development, and deeptech entrepreneurship combine to produce innovations of global reach.

The fact that UGA is both a co-lead of FACET and the cradle of one of its first laureates says something essential: UGA does not simply accompany the energy transition. It is one of its driving forces.