TEAPOTS aims to give agri-food players an innovative integrated, modular, and flexible solution to meet local and seasonal energy demand through the valorisation of lignocellulosic and difficult to be treated agricultural waste while producing biochar. The first valorisation process will employ pyrolysis to extract heat from waste. Heat will be employed by an Organic Rankine Cycle to produce electric energy, which will be employed by a Dry Cooler & Oil-free AWC to cool down cold rooms for storing agri-food products. The second process will extract heat using a Compost Heat Recovery System to harness hot water from the oxidation of biomass while producing compost. Heat will be used to provide sanitary hot water. These technologies will be integrated in the TEAPOTS Integrated Solution, TIS, to demonstrate the feasibility of the entire process using all the modules to provide refrigeration. Biochar and compost will be used as plant biostimulants to increase yields and store carbon in soil improving the environmental footprint of the end-user. Feedstocks to be used in the TIS will be mixed to improve energy production and products’ quality. Field and satellite data will be gathered to evaluate biomass growth, while the TIS operational data will be used to evaluate the environmental impact, through LCA analysis, and the overall functionality of the solution. Data will be integrated in a database which will allow the prediction of waste biomass production. This will be used by a Data Driven Decision Support System (DSS) to improve field and waste logistics, which will provide the means to keep the TIS up and running. The prediction system and the DSS will be integrated in the TEAPOTS Digital Platform, which will have an easy-to-use user interface to help end-users in the management of the entire solution. A Multy-Actor Approach will be employed to create a network of biomass producers interested in using agricultural waste to improve their environmental impact

The CREATE project aims to tackle the thermal energy storage challenge for the built environment by developing a compact heat storage. This heat battery allows for better use of available renewables in two ways: 1) bridging the gap between supply and demand of renewables and 2) increasing the efficiency in the energy grid by converting electricity peaks into stored heat to be used later, increasing the energy grid flexibility and giving options for tradability and economic benefits. The main aim of CREATE is to develop and demonstrate a heat battery, ie an advanced thermal storage system based on Thermo-Chemical Materials, that enables economically affordable, compact and loss-free storage of heat in existing buildings. The CREATE concept is to develop stabilized storage materials with high storage density, improved stability and low price, and package them in optimized heat exchangers, using optimized storage modules. Full scale demonstration will be done in a real building, with regulatory/normative, economic and market boundaries taken into account. To ensure successful exploitation, the full knowledge, value, and supply chain are mobilized in the present consortium. It will be the game changer in the transformation of our existing building stock towards near-zero energy buildings. WP1 Management,WP2 Cost Analysis and planning for future commercial products cost,WP3 System definition,design and simulation,WP4 Thermal storage materials optimization (key breakthroughs),WP5 Critical storage components and technology development (key breakthroughs),WP6 Thermal storage reactor design, implementation and test,WP7 System integration, experiments and optimization,WP8 Building integration and full scale demonstration,WP9 Dissemination and exploitation of results. CREATE will create viable supply chain by bringing together multiple scientific disciplines and industry. In other words, CREATE envisions a multi-scale, multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach.

A fully decarbonised European energy system must be equipped with very large flexibility capacities, enabling the uptake of intermittent renewable sources, coupling energy sectors, and increasing the energy system efficiency. The TREASURE project paves the way for the accelerated realization of large pit thermal energy storages that serve as the enabler for fully renewable district heating networks and industrial heating systems. With the project, 7 demonstrators are being realized in 5 different countries. The projects` aim is to use synergies in order to improve cost effectiveness through the targeted development of improved components and the collective improvement of design and building processes. Monitoring data from an already operating storage and from the demonstrators are used for better numerical simulation of actual and future system performance. Through the participation of market-oriented partners possible solutions to the financing, permitting, and social challenges in the realisation of large pit thermal energy storage projects are mapped and discussed with the broad group of stakeholders, with a core group of 15 satellite initiatives. The experience with the operation, maintenance and refurbishment of especially Danish pit thermal storages is used to improve the design and operation of the demos, the satellite initiatives and future storages in broad. The project consortium is composed of partners from the complete value chain; component suppliers, building companies, engineering companies, research and developments institutes, contractors, energy service providers, district heating companies and professional organizations. The developed roadmap and generated knowledge in the fields of planning, design, components, building, system integration, financing, permitting and business plans is actively disseminated to experts and to decision makers in order to accelerate the realisation of more than 2000 large PTES needed for the full decarbonisation.

Around 461 million ton/year of C&DW are generated in EU28. Recent studies on the characterization of C&DW samples at European level revealed a predominant fraction of concrete (52% average). Over the last years, novel technology has been developed aiming to guarantee high quality recycled concrete aggregates for use in new concrete, thereby closing the concrete loop. The most advanced concrete recycling technologies currently produce coarse (>4mm) recycled concrete aggregates by removing cement paste from the surface of the aggregates. However, the fine (0-4 mm) fraction, ca. 40% of the concrete waste, still faces technical barriers to be incorporated into new concrete and consequently, is often down-cycled. At the other extreme, there are minor (e.g. glass) and emerging (e.g. mineral wool) C&DW materials, currently accounting for 0.7% of the total, but revealing growing rates as consequence of European regulations. Those emerging C&DW streams have not yet found technological and business solutions, being mostly landfilled. On the other hand, concrete is the most widely used material in building, with a growing trend towards prefabrication. The European precast concrete sector faces diverse needs for resource efficiency improvement (reduction in natural resource consumption and metabolization of waste materials, reduction in carbon footprint and embodied energy, design for reuse, increase in process efficiency and waste minimization, lighter solutions, enhanced thermal performance through novel cost-effective insulating materials). Aiming at facing these challenges, VEEP main objective is to eco-design, develop and demonstrate new cost-effective technological solutions that will lead to novel closed-loop circular approaches for C&DW recycling into novel multilayer precast concrete elements (for both new buildings and refurbishment) incorporating new concretes as well as superinsulation material produced by using at least 75% (by weight) of C&DW recycled materials.