In recent years, research has shown that energy savings resulting from energy efficiency improvements have wider benefits for the economy and society such as increases in employment, GDP, energy security, positive impacts on health, ecosystems and crops or resource consumption. In order to develop more cost-effective energy efficiency policies and optimised long-term strategies in the EU, these multiple benefits have to be accounted for more comprehensively in the future. Although this field of research is growing, the findings are disperse and mostly have important gaps regarding geographic, sectorial or technical measure coverage and findings vary largely. This makes a consideration of multiple benefits in policy making and policy evaluation difficult today. The proposed project addresses these issues and aims at closing the identified gaps by five central research innovations: 1) data gathering on energy savings and technology costs per EU country for the most relevant 20 to 30 energy efficiency measures in the residential, commercial, industrial and transport sectors, 2) developing adequate methodologies for benefit quantification, monetisation and aggregation, 3) quantifying the most important multiple benefits and where adequate, monetising, 4) developing an openly available calculation tool that greatly simplifies the evaluation of co-impacts for specific energy efficiency measures to enable decision-making and 5) developing a simple online visualisation tool for customisable graphical analysis and assessment of multiple benefits and data exportation. Project outcomes can thus directly be used by stakeholders and will help to define cost-effective policies and support policy-makers and evaluators in the development and monitoring of energy efficiency strategies and policies in the future.

We are an international consortium formed by six leading research institutes in the field of green economy. Our GOAL is to develop robust evidence on green growth in both EU and Chinese cities and to draw lessons to facilitate a transition towards sustainable development in EU and Chinese cities. Our team has brought strong and multi-disciplinary expertise into this project from aspects of urban development, environmental economics, economy-energy-environmental modelling,carbon accounting and policy analysis for technology transfers. Green growth means shifting to a development model where environmental protection and economic growth complement each other, rather than being contradictory. Generating 85% of Europe's GDP, 80% of energy consumption and 75% of carbon emissions, cities have a central role to play in this process. European cities are striving for green growth. They are adapting local regulation and raising citizen awareness. Recently, the EU has launched the Europe 2020 strategy that sets out sustainable growth as one of its priorities, alongside smart and inclusive growth: 'making our production more resource efficient while boosting our competitiveness' . On the other hand, China will play a pivotal role in the fight against climate change given due to its immense size and need to develop. Shifting Chinese cities to a green growth path is a critical part of the fight. Chinese cities home 46% of the population and contribute 75% of the Chinese national economy and nearly 85% of CO2 emissions. The nexus between urban evolution and emission mitigation is the key in China's green growth. While the green-growth debate is becoming more prominent at the international level, understanding how to operationalise green-growth strategies is still lacking at more local levels. The key challenges remain: Challenge 1: What are the dynamics of emission trends in Chinese cities at different urbanisation and industrialisation stages? Energy and greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission inventories are usually built at national level. But no such international framework exists requiring measurements of city emissions or providing detailed methodological guidance for conducting an urban emissions inventory. We will construct city level emission inventories. Challenge 2: What factors are driving emission growth in cities? Quantification of emission driving forces has been extensively studies at the national level. Few studies have found at the city level. Understanding the key factors in driving the emission growth, one can target the problem more specific to reduce emissions in cities. Challenge 3: What are the sources of green growth in cities and how can we support green growth? Green growth can open up new sources of growth through increasing resource efficiencies and economic productivities, supporting technology innovations, creation of new market, boosting business confidence in green growth and enhance economic stability. Institutional arrangements and economic incentives are the key to sustain the sources of growth in cities. New institutional arrangements will need to be established to guide the development of green growth strategies and to overcome the institutional inertia and silos that exist around economic and environmental policy making. Challenge 4: How to use interventions to transform cities to green growth? Cities are the centre of transitioning towards green economy. Green growth is already underway in both European and Chinese cities. We identify available interventions for green growth and examine the effectiveness of those interventions.

It is high time for the EU to develop pathways and strategies for decarbonisation also in emissions intensive sectors such as steel, plastics, paper, and meat and dairy. These are sectors where low carbon transitions are still relatively unexplored. Some progressive companies and other actors are just beginning to consider such pathways. The overall aim of REINVENT is to help Europe achieve its long-term climate objectives, while supporting the development of other societal benefits and the economy. A new evidence-based framework to assess the viability, challenges and governance implications of decarbonisation pathways will be developed and tools provided. It builds on the integration of conceptual work, empirical mapping and case-studies of innovations and climate initiatives, co-creation of knowledge and co-design of pathways, and careful assessment of the implications for other societal goals. The approach is to study and understand transitions and emerging initiatives from within sectoral contexts where government climate policy is only one of many factors that shape perceptions and strategies. As a result, REINVENT supports systemic innovation and system-wide transformation in the studied sectors. The project provides stakeholders with access to leading research and analytical capacity concerning key dimensions of low carbon transitions; it is also a platform for dialogue and learning about feasible pathways so that policies can be better aligned with the specific needs and conditions in different sectors. REINVENT will make an innovative scientific and societal contribution through (a) focusing on important economic sectors that are relatively unexplored yet important for the whole economy, (b) studying transitions from within these sectors, and (c) taking whole value chains into account through (d) a new analytical approach capable of advancing our understanding of key drivers, dynamics and implications of decarbonisation.

EU-CHINA BRIDGE will support the transition to a climate-neutral and resilient society in both Europe and China by jointly advancing knowledge on technology innovations and roadmaps for decarbonising energy intensive industries, co-creating innovative modelling by combining cutting-edge bottom-up and integrated assessment modelling to quantify net-zero sustainable pathways, and developing the most updated and comprehensive emissions data. It will intensively engage relevant stakeholders from both regions, enhancing dialogues, and fostering mutual learning among policymakers, industries, and experts. It will deliver two open-source EU-China joint technology inventories of promising net-zero emission technology options for the iron & steel and chemical industries, two co-implemented demonstrations of promising technologies in China, and co-created scale-up paths and roadmaps of the selected industrial technologies in both regions. It will also develop the most up-to-date, high-resolution, multi-sectoral, national and regional GHG and short-lived climate pollutant emission inventories as well as dynamic monitoring of key emission sources at high spatiotemporal granularity. A state-of-the-art modelling framework will be developed, exploiting and advancing cutting-edge and established modelling tools for EU and China, using the latest emissions data, representing technology and policy options, enabling assessment of socioeconomic impacts, covering multiple economic sectors and regions, and offering high spatial and technology detail. The enhanced models will be used to co-produce net-zero pathways for the EU and China, explicitly assessing co-benefits and trade-offs of climate policies with other societal goals while exploring cooperation policies and governance to drive the global transformation, and assessing the distributional and global-level implications of the two regions’ decarbonisation. The pathways will be documented in new workspaces in the I2AM PARIS platform

The project aims at the development of an innovative RES-based system for heat and electricity supply in order to achieve an almost energy autonomous multi-family building with regard to heating and electricity consumption as well as electro-mobility. This shall be achieved by integrating a novel highly efficient biomass micro-CHP technology based on an updraft gasifier, a new gas cleaning system and a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), a state-of-the-art PV system and appropriate innovative energy storage solutions. This system shall be economically highly attractive for future users and it shall also distinguish itself by virtually zero emissions of CO, OGC and dust as well as 55% to 65% reduced NOx emissions compared to other biomass CHP technologies. Consequently, it shall increase the penetration of RES on the multi-family house level and has the potential to significantly contribute to reaching the EU climate and clean air goals. The key innovations of the project are related to the novel micro-scale biomass CHP system. They comprise a flexible partitioning of product gas supplied to the SOFC and to a gas burner in order to cover the overall heat demand and to maximise SOFC operation at the same time, a novel combined thermal and catalytic tar reformer, new highly efficient and durable stack units and a novel compact SOFC system with integrated HCl and H2S removal reactor. Based on a 2.5 kWel SOFC with an electric efficiency of 44%, which is flexibly coupled with a 14 kW gasifier, overall efficiencies of more than 90% shall be gained. A TRL of 5 shall be achieved at the end of the project. The methodology applied to reach these goals relies on technology development tasks (based on process simulations, CFD aided design of the single units, test plant construction, performance and evaluation of test runs), a technology assessment part covering risk, techno-economic, environmental and overall impact assessments as well as targeted dissemination activities.