CICERONE brings together programme owners, research organizations and other stakeholders to create a platform for efficient Circular Economy programming. The priority setting and the organization of the future platform will be driven by Programme Owners (POs), involved either as project partners, or via a stakeholder network. Diversity of national / regional situations is reflected in the partnership. The work will be carried out in close cooperation with research & technology organisations (RTOs), which contribute with their expertise of the main scientific and technological challenges. Consultation mechanisms will also ensure that all stakeholders will be able to actively contribute (civil society, industry, innovative SMEs, startups, cities, investors, networks, etc.). An initial benchmarking exercise will be carried out for a deeper understanding of the state of the art, mapping stakeholders, existing RDI priorities as well as funding and legal mechanisms. A prioritisation methodology will be developed to support an analysis of the current performance: synergies, gaps and duplications will be characterised, and pathways for improvements will be formulated. Identified best practices will drive the definition of policy recommendations. Once the state of the art has been clearly mapped out, the actual prioritisation work will be carried out. This includes building a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), performing an ex-ante impact assessment of joint programming on circular economy R&I, and developing a policy toolkit to promote the priorities and foster adoption by policy-makers. The project will also set the grounds for the future PO platform, starting with defining its strategic role in the existing landscape. The next step will be to specify governance and possible legal frameworks, as well as creating a financially sustainable model. It is a key objective that the platform be sustained after the end of the project.

Industrial symbiosis (IS) is a key solution to address the challenges of conserving natural resources, yet the lack of standards and the difficulty in IS standardisation due to its cross-sectoral nature and additional bottlenecks impede the uptake of IS solutions. RISERS aims to address such bottlenecks through the development of a roadmap towards IS standardisation, promoting resource sharing and the integration of new R&I results to support IS. To this aim, we will operate in several dimensions: (1) Identification of gaps and opportunities in existing sectoral practices and standards for the uptake of priority IS synergies; (2) promote the uptake and contribution of R&I results to IS standardisation through identifying demand-led R&I priorities, as well as through identifying barriers and enablers to market entry for innovative IS solutions; (3) engaging the policy community in IS standardisation through suggesting new or adjusting existing policy Frameworks and initiatives. These activities will be conducted through constant engagement of experts and stakeholders from the industry, standardization bodies, academia, policy, funding bodies and additional relevant stakeholders and continuous dissemination op results and knowledge for their uptake, fostering community building, knowledge exchange and cross-sectoral collaboration. Based on the knowledge developed and gained in all these activities, RISERS will develop a roadmap for developing new or adjusting existing directions IS standardisation to promote circularity of resources. In the long run, thorough facilitating IS standardization RISERS will contribute to, among others, effective use of resources and cross-sectoral interoperability in resource sharing, easier market entry for innovative IS enabling technologies, improved integration of R&I results in IS standardization, cost savings & new revenues from increased adoption of IS and increased EU participation in international standardization.

Global Manganese-alloys (Mn) are highly linked to the steel sector for key engineering applications in Europe. In 2017, Mn-alloy production was approx. 4 Mio tons, required 12,200 GWh electrical energy and emitted around 14.2 Mio tons of CO2. Therefore, an energy intensive and inherent cross-sectorial value chain that is, nowadays, led by the Asian market demand. PREMA is an ambitious initiative that aims at demonstrating an innovative suite of technologies (involving heat recovery and solar technologic approaches) that allow to pre-treat Mn ores, utilising more efficiently energy and material streams and decreasing direct and indirect CO2 emissions (along with SO2 and NOx). LCA and LCCA methodologies will be implemented from early stages to ensure the technical, economic and environmental viability of the solution across the whole Mn-alloys’ value chain. The vision of PREMA is thus to make the Mn-alloys sector in Europe more flexible, sustainable and attractive. In order to cover the whole value chain, there is a strong presence of South African (SA) partners in the consortium, SA being the top 1 in high quality Mn ores’ extraction and exports worldwide. A win-win situation in order to strengthen the Mn-alloys and steel value chains in Europe. PREMA consortium puts together a total of 11 production facilities spread over Europe and SA among 4 Mn producers, representing an aggregated process capacity of 380 MW (Transalloys in SA, Eramet in France and Norway, Ferroglobe in Norway and Spain and OFZ in Slovakia). The innovative character of the project is brought by major players in R&D across Europe and SA, with the Norwegian organisation SINTEF as coordinator. Last but not least, clustering with other EU initiatives, including other SPIRE projects, will be paid special attention in order to create awareness of the project developments from early stages of the demonstration.

Air pollution and ambient pollution, carbon-related issues ranging from GHG emissions to carbon shortages in soil, the opportunities provided by NBS and the intricacies of urban ecosystems present an extremely complex set of interdependent problems and opportunities that have to be addressed as such – interactively, mutually and innovatively. Upsurge is considering all these aspects and is providing evidence-based targeted responses that will enable EU cities to transition into a more regenerative future. At its core, Upsurge is presenting the European Regenerative Urban Lighthouse, which will enable cities to unlock their regenerative potential and provide them with knowledge and guidance in regenerative transition. Supported by an innovative continuous self-check progress mechanism (Regenerative Index) and by the Clearing House as a knowledge nerve centre, Upsurge will motivate cities and other clients through its networking activities to engage and step aboard the regenerative transition under Lighthouse’s leadership. Upsurge is demonstrating technical excellence through a multimodal adaptable sensing system, through integrated and integrative digitalisation environment supported by IoT and AI, several real-life demonstrations and based on extrapolated criteria conducted simulative demonstrations showcasing the viability, feasibility and implementability of proposed technical solutions. The knowledge core of Upsurge will be introduced within the quintuple helix verification model bringing together all relevant factors affecting the implementation of NBS and thus regenerative change. Quintuple helix approach will truly enable the assessment and exploration of complementary beneficial effects provided by project solutions.