All over Europe, a good level of knowledge about Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) development has been reached. There are different good quality methodologies and guidelines available. However, currently municipalities struggle to implement these action plans. There are different reasons for that; one of the most important is the fact that often municipal employees do not feel engaged and are not motivated to take any sort of actions and initiatives, unless someone has actually “obliged” them. In many cases, this lack of engagement and commitment ends up with investments in energy efficiency that do not deliver expected technical and economic outcomes. Hence, the energy efficiency potential is not fully exploited and worse suboptimal investments do not provide expected yields. Moreover, local authorities (LAs) more often are facing also challenges regarding climate resilient infrastructure and climate adaptation. The level of knowledge and understanding is even scarcer as regarding climate mitigation. COMPETE4SECAP is designed to deliver a systematic approach to energy savings in local authorities using energy management systems (EnMS) according to ISO 50001 or European Energy Award with dedicated online monitoring tool and energy saving competitions. EnMS and competitions when combined can trigger significant benefits by providing innovative and efficient way to involve municipalities that have already their SEAPs but do not act in order to foster their integrated development at local level. Trained and engaged municipal employees will be able to better implement energy efficiency projects, which then require higher investments. An EnMS will help the LA to have reliable data for informed decision and further help in monitoring and evaluation of implemented projects. The use of renewable energy and integration of climate adaptation will also be facilitated through EnMS with the set of procedures from an environmental management system (e.g. IS0 140001).

Circular Agronomics (CA) provides a comprehensive synthesis of practical solutions to improve the current Carbon (C), Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorus (P) cycling in European agro-ecosystems and related up- and down-stream processes within the value-chain of food production. The proposed solutions would constitute a further step towards making agriculture an integral part of a circular economy by increasing resource efficiency while simultaneously addressing associated environmental challenges such as greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions as well as eutrophication of water bodies. Along 7 work packages and 6 case-studies, representing locations with different biogeographic conditions and environmental challenges typical for the European agricultural sector, the objective of CA is to contribute to a development towards sustainable, resilient and inclusive economies that are part of circular and zero-waste societies. The involved multi-actor and international consortium aims (i) To increase the understanding of C, N, P flows and the related potential to reduce environmental impacts at farm and regional level under different bio-geographical conditions; (ii) To close loops within cropland farming, from livestock to cropland farming and to increase the reuse of waste/wastewater from food-industry to improve soil fertility and to increase nutrient use efficiency; (iii) To highlight the performance of different prototypes of agro-ecological systems and increase sustainability of food production in the EU; and (iv) To contribute to the improvement of the European Agricultural Policies by providing evidence based, farmer led and consumer relevant recommendations for the agri-food chain. Cross-cutting social, economic and environmental evaluation ensure the overall sustainability of the investigated solution.

It is the key objective of the project CRISTAL (40 months) to increase the share of freight transport on inland water transport (IWT) by a minimum of 20% and to demonstrate on its three pilot sites (Italy, Poland and France) strategies to improve reliability by 80%. CRISTAL project will assure IWT capacity at 50% even during extreme weather events. Towards that CRISTAL will co-create, test and implement integrated, cooperative and innovative solutions in its three pilot partners’ areas identified in Italy, France and Poland. The project will include the aspects of technological innovation/development and digitalization; further advancement towards the Physical Internet, governance solution and business models, will be proposed while targeting sustainability and infrastructure resilience requirements.

The aim of greenGain is to strengthen the energy use of regional and local biomass from the maintenance of areas and landscape elements, which is performed in the public interest. The scope of the biomass used, will be any material predominantly produced from nature conservation and landscape management, but not from energy-crops. The main target groups are regional and local players, who are responsible for maintenance and conservation work and for the biomass residue management in their regions. Moreover, the focus will be on service providers - including farmers and forest owners, their associations, NGOs and energy providers and consumers. The project will show strategies to build up reliable knowledge on local availability of these feedstocks and know-how on issues from logistics to storage and sustainable conversion pathways for the transformation of these feedstocks to renewable energy (heat and energy products). Furthermore political, legal and environmental aspects will be addressed in model regions. Awareness raising, governance and public acceptance actions will be focussed on. General guidelines will be prepared to guarantee a wide dissemination to other regions in the EU. The regional partners will be actively supported by Technical Partners for the project measures’ development and implementation. As a CSA, the project focal point will be the exchange between the model regions and other similar relevant players in the EU, by good practice exchange, a topic-specific website, several workshops and educational site visits in different regions as well as other standard public relations activities. The project team is carefully balanced between technical and scientific organisations and local demand side oriented players. Regions in northern Europe with a wide knowledge in this field are cooperating with European (south-west, middle, east) regions, having an untapped potential, that can be accessed through efficient knowledge transfer.

There is an untapped potential for private investments in energy efficiency, especially in the residential private sector, due to non-technical barriers. Some EU countries have more developed markets and have shown significant good practices (ie. France), while others are lacking behind, especially in Central East Europe (energy service markets still sub-optimal but great opportunities for ambitious investments in deep refurbishment) and in South Europe (where energy consumption for heating in the housing sector is lower than it is in the North, making deep refurbishment investments based on EU policies less beneficiary). PadovaFIT EXPANDED starts from the recent experience of the IEE-funded PadovaFIT project (lead by CPD with SOGESCA as technical partner), focused on the the energy refurbishment of condominiums in the Padova metropolitan area, via an ESCO (selected with a public tender) and the use of standardized EPCs. The project builds on the experience (good and bad) generated in the Padova area (engagement actions, trained condominium facilitators, market players involvement, template contracts to be improved, financing products to be better elaborated) and aims at planning, creating and piloting a one-stop-shop dedicated to private residential buildings with an improved and financially sustainable business model, result of specific mapping of needs and SWOT analysis. The project aims at expanding the business model to the metropolitan area of Timisoara (RO) who will will adapt the model to the Romanian conditions, launching and piloting a one-stop-shop as well. The Bulgarian Energy Agency of Plovdiv will support the metropolitan areas of Vidin and Smolyan to prepare the ground, for the launching of sound one-stop-shops in Bulgaria. The consortium is integrated by an internationally renowned research centre (Bocconi University) expert in business modeling, 2 finance experts and Climate Alliance, a European network of local authorities for sustainability.