Automated Planning and Scheduling is a central research area in AI that has been studied since the inception of the field and where European research has been making strong contributions over decades. Planning is a decision-making technology that consists in reasoning on a predictive model of a system being controlled and deciding how and when to act in order to achieve a desired objective. It is a relevant technology for many application areas that need quick, automated and optimal decisions, like agile manufacturing, agrifood or logistics. Although there is a wealth of techniques that are mature in terms of science and systems, several obstacles hinder their adoption, thus preventing them from making the footprint on European industry that they should make. For example, it is hard for practitioners to find the right techniques for a given planning problem, there are no shared standards to use them, and there is no easy access to expertise on how to encode domain knowledge into a planner. The AIPlan4EU project will bring AI planning as a first-class citizen in the European AI On-Demand (AI4EU) Platform by developing a uniform, user-centered framework to access the existing planning technology and by devising concrete guidelines for innovators and practitioners on how to use this technology. To do so, we will consider use-cases from diverse application areas that will drive the design and the development of the framework, and include several available planning systems as engines that can be selected to solve practical problems. We will develop a general and planner-agnostic API that will both be served by the AI4EU platform and be available as a resource to be integrated into the users' systems. The framework will be validated on use-cases both from within the consortium and recruited by means of cascade funding; moreover, standard interfaces between the framework and common industrial technologies will be developed and made available.

ACCSESS – providing access to cost-efficient, replicable, safe and flexible CCUS. Main objectives: 1)Demonstrate, at TRL7, and integrate cost-efficient CO2 capture and use in industrial installations, to enable permanent Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) 2)Provide access routes for CO2 captured from European industries to the flexible transport and storage infrastructures under development in the North Sea 3)Leverage on CDR to drive societal integration of CCUS towards urban and European sustainability ACCSESS takes a cross-sectorial approach, addressing Pulp and Paper, Cement, Waste to Energy, and Biorefining, that all have the potential to contribute to CDR. ACCSESS will test at TRL7 the combination of an environmentally benign, enzymatic solvent (regenerated at 80oC) and a Rotary Packed Bed (RPB) absorber. Tests at 2 tpd CO2 captured will be done at a pulp and paper mill in Sweden and a cement kiln in Poland. Recarbonation of demolition concrete fines will be demonstrated at TRL7 (CCU). CCUS chains from inland Europe and the Baltics to the North Sea will be developed and optimized, with an open-source tool. Low pressure ship-based CO2 transport (7 bar) for 50% cost cuts is developed, and also safe CO2 loading and offloading. The ACCSESS concept is centred around the project vision to Develop replicable CCUS pathways towards a Climate Neutral Europe in 2050. ACCSESS will improve CO2 capture integration in industrial installations (20-30% cost cuts) as a key element to accelerate CCUS implementation, address the full CCUS chain and the societal integration of CCUS. ACCSESS has the ambition unleash the ability of CCUS to contribute to the ambitious EU Green Deal transformation strategy. The project is dedicated to developing viable industrial CCUS business models. ACCSESS will engage with citizens and citizens, explaining how CCUS can contribute to the production of climate neutral or climate positive end-products in a sustainable cities' context.

COREu will demonstrate key enabling technologies in a CCS value chain and support the development of three new CCS routes in Central-East Europe (CEE), helping accelerate CCS development . COREu will (a) provide the means for development of an open-access, trans-national network (infrastructure and logistic) to connect emitters with storage sites in Europe, by identifying multimodal transport requirements, and developing emitters’ clusters to create the demand and the investment rationale, (b) increase the knowledge of the CCS value chain across Europe through interconnected initiatives, sharing of experience, knowledge and data to create a common framework that encompasses all key aspects of CCS deployment: technological know-how, business models, consensus management, monitoring, reporting and validation, policy framework, transport and storage safety. COREU will contribute to 6.8Mt/year in CO2 reduction by 2035 and 36Mt/year by 2050, develop 8 innovations for Measurement Monitoring Verification, interoperability and Value Chain Monitoring, and improve the Internal Rate of Return of CO2 infrastructure investment by 6% through de-risking core technologies.