SHEALTHY proposal aims to assess and develop an optimal combination of non-thermal sanitization, preservation and stabilization methods to improve the safety (inactivation of pathogens and spoilage microorganisms), while preserving the nutritional quality (up to 30%) and prolonging the shelf-life (up to 50%) of minimally processed F&V products. By combining and modulating non-thermal technologies with minimally processing operation, we will respond to consumers’ demand for fresh, healthy, convenient, sustainable and locally produced and additive-free food. The combined and optimised mild technologies will be demonstrated and validated in 2 business cases: Minimally processed fruits and vegetables and Fruit and vegetable-based juices & smoothies. Sanitization during washing will be optimized by applying in combination ultrasound (US), electrolysed water, plasma activated water, High Intensity Pulsed Light and Blue Light. Bioactive coating, active and intelligent packaging will be applied for quality preservation and shelf life extension of minimally processed F&V. F&V-based juices & smoothies will be stabilized by US and high pressure processing. For F&V by-product valorisation, US, pulsed electric field and membrane filtration will be used to extract bioactive compounds. Sustainable and flexible processing methods will be transferred and adapted to the need of local F&V micro and SMEs, interconnecting primary producers through novel cooperative business models and new logistics systems, to enhance the traceability and authenticity of raw materials along the F&V value chain. Commercial feasibility will be assessed, including consumer acceptance and regulatory, safety and environmental aspects. SHEALTHY will combine the technology trends and consumer needs to afford the business models, technology transfer and market orientation that will facilitate the transition towards a new collaborative agrifood ecosystem for traditional, local and rural SMEs around EU.

Developing a fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly food system represents a key priority of the European Green Deal. This is expressed in particular through the ‘Farm to Fork Strategy’, which recognises the need to empower consumers to make informed, healthy and sustainable food choices and to reduce food loss and food waste. FOODMISSION aims therefore to use multi-actor and inclusive Transformation Labs and blend citizen science, learning and gamification approaches to understand citizens’ food practices for initiating behavioural changes, and ultimately engage and motivate to accelerate the uptake of more sustainable food behaviour. The project objectives are the following: (1) Setting up Transformation Labs that will support the project through all its phases from co-design to uptake, (2) Design of a comprehensive citizen science data framework, collecting and processing citizen-generated data on their food practices and development of a technical data infrastructure and data visualisation tools to support data sharing and analysis, (3) Design of a citizen motivation and engagement framework for empowering individual and collective change, (4) Co-development of a gamified educational virtual platform prototype and its content and activities, (5) Piloting and evaluation of the gamified educational virtual platform in 6 European countries, (6) Promotion of FOODMISSION’s key exploitable results and their impact to engage citizens for fair, inclusive, healthy, and sustainable food system in Europe and uptake of the outputs beyond the project and consortium. FOODMISSION will further contribute to the Food 2030 pathways for action. The interdisciplinary consortium is composed of 10 members based in 8 European countries, bringing together universities, innovative companies and various stakeholder organisations representing consumers, food retailers and food enterprises, and covering diverse socio-economic and demographic contexts.

STEP-IN will develop a global methodology for the effective analysis and tackling of energy poverty. STEP-IN has identified three highly challenging locations with diverse characteristics across Europe including: a mountainous region in Greece, a rural area in Hungary and an urban area in the UK with low quality housing. Within each of these areas there are a range of vulnerable consumers (e.g. low income households, elderly people, single-parent households). At each of these locations a living lab will be set up which will bring together local experts and stakeholders with energy poor consumers. These labs will consist of a range of approaches including energy cafes, advisor visits and ICT systems. The ICT tools provided by STEP-IN will support consumers, advisors and local stakeholder organisations to make effective decisions. To ensure the success of the living labs STEP-IN has partnered with key local stakeholders and schemes at the chosen locations. The emphasis will be on improving the participants' quality of life through maintaining or improving comfort levels while at the same time encouraging more efficient energy usage. The energy advice provided will seek to minimize rebound effects and environmental impacts. All labs will be assessed using metrics such as energy consumption & mix, types of behavior change and levels of comfort. This will ensure that the participants benefit, while at the same time the labs’ impact can be assessed and that the global methodology is validated and can be up-scaled. This will ensure that the approaches are relevant and out with the project. The project has over 35 letters of support from organisations including regulators, MEPs, charities, energy providers, housing organisations, local authorities and Government Ministries who will take part in a stakeholder network. This will lead to the results being disseminated at local, national and EU level.

Residential energy consumption represents the 28% of all EU consumption and if commercial buildings are also considered this percentage increases to 40% (36% of EU CO2 emissions). In this context, is clear that the reduction of consumption in the residential sector should play an important role in energy efficiency programmes and policies as is stated in the recent Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/EU. Most energy efficiency measures implemented in Europe involved technological interventions. In contrast, everyday energy-consuming behaviours are largely habitual and therefore the potential of energy savings at home with actions focused in consumer behaviour is really promising. In this context the provision of feedback to consumers has resulted in really promising results, achieving savings in the range of 5-20%. But some limitations exists. The aim of this project is to fill the gaps and advanced in this context, being an essential preparatory activity for the future large scale demonstration of feedback methodologies. The key aim of this project is to develop an advanced and integral user-centred framework for the implementation of efficient energy feedback programmes in the domestic area. Our approach relies in the complete characterisation of the EU energy consumer, and the design of specific personalised actions tailored to each consumer pattern detected based on the use of natural language and emotional contents. NATCONSUMERS will set the scenario to allow strengthening the dialogue between the EU energy system stakeholders in order to define robustness methodologies exploiting to the maximum the potential of energy feedback approaches, filling the existing gaps not still covered by previous pilots and experiments. NATCONSUMERS consortium brings together representatives of all stakeholders and areas involved in the project. A concise dissemination and awareness programme is proposed to reach the target communities and increase the impact of the project.