Urban systems globally experience significant and interlinked societal challenges including pressures on public health and well-being and growing inequalities and social disruption. At the same time, urban systems are particularly vulnerable to impacts of climate change and suffer from degraded or lack of natural ecosystems to help alleviate these impacts. A promising approach to deal with these challenges is to work with nature’s capacity and qualities in a sustainability perspective. Working with nature in urban settings has advantages over other approaches: multi-functionality, multi-benefits and cost-effectiveness. Nature Based Solutions (NBS) are interventions that seek to restore, improve, enhance or conserve natural capital and biodiversity in terms of habitats or ecosystems. Subsequently, these ecosystems provide enhanced multiple ecosystem services that contribute to social and economic benefits, reducing the urban societal challenges. They can help build climate resilience in cities, improve liveability, and in collaboration with other urban priorities contribute to building inclusive communities, closing social equality gaps, while promoting innovative businesses and jobs. The aim of Regreen is to generate evidence for how Nature-based solutions (NBS) underpinned by improved urban governance, and public and private participation can systematically integrate ecosystem services and biodiversity and advocate their benefits and values in urban planning to meet societal challenges including climate change resilience, public health and well-being, and social inclusion. Co-creation with urban planners, citizens and business in urban living labs and educational programs for children ensure long-term sustainability of solutions, and support to business development assist further realization. This to accelerate the crucial transition toward smart, green and healthy cities in Europe and China.

The aim of SCCALE 203050 (Sustainable Collective Citizen Action for a Local Europe) is to scale the growth of energy communities across Europe in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy production, district heating and more in households and non-residential buildings. Building on the experience of the cooperative movement and a wide range of cities and municipalities, we will: - Set up at least 25 energy communities, and directly support the replication of the SCCALE methodology in 34 additional communities - Develop a step-by-step guide for potential community leaders to support the creation, maturation and replication of energy communities. - Develop currently specific key performance indicators for community leaders and municipalities to assess the maturity and growth of the energy communities in their territories, and for external partners to assess a community's maturity and financial viability. - Gather proven technical tools and financing models suitable for citizen collective action. - Identify viable contractual models for energy communities and the involved stakeholders. - Encourage the proliferation of energy communities across Europe via a network of experts (including municipalities, SMEs, NGOs and academic institutions) to support new and existing energy communities. - Support policy makers at the European, national and local level in identifying suitable policies to foster the growth of energy communities in Europe through recommendations and discussions with policy makers.

The Biomasud certification system of the quality and sustainability of solid biofuels (http://biomasud.eu/), was created within the BIOMASUD interreg IV project in 2013 with the aim of covering all typical Mediterranean biomass resources used as solid biofuels in small and medium heating installations: domestic, commercial, institutional etc. The label is owned by several partners established in Spain, Portugal and France.Presently, the label includes wood chips and pellets, olive stones and some types of nut shells. Also within Biomasud project, a GIS tool that provides information about sustainable biomass resources and costs available in different Mediterranean countries was updated and upgraded with new information about agroindustrial residues and pellets production and producers Presently, some solid biofuel companies are already producing under the Biomasud quality label in Spain, and others have also shown the interest to adopt it in Spain and Italy, but there is a strong need for development of the label along the whole Mediterranean area where the biomasses and solid biofuels under the label are widely produced and used in the domestic sector market out of any standards. Moreover, there is also a need to extend the label to new biomasses that are used in the Mediterranean area and which are not covered by the label, this making therefore more difficult their appropriate combustion in stoves or small-medium size boilers. Finally, it is also important to mention that, in order to improve the label, a research is needed to develop new and/or review the existing Biomasud label analytical limits and sustainability tools along the value chain, including, the GHG calculation procedure. In the described context, the overall goal of the project is the improvement, dissemination and market development of the Biomasud label in order to promote the sustainable use of the Mediterranean autochthonous solid biofuels in the domestic sector.

Within the Energy Union framework, the European Union (EU) is aiming at transforming the energy systems towards a sustainable, low-carbon and climate-friendly economy, putting consumers at its centre. Buildings play a key role in this transition as, on one hand they are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the EU and, on the other hand, the potential engagement of consumers through the demand-response mechanisms. To enable this transformation, distribution grids will face news paradigms in the ways they operate relying more on flexibility smart grids with capacity to safely host more renewable energy sources (RES) and integrate new loads, such as power to heat/cold, power to gas/liquid and new technologies, as well as electric vehicles (EVs) while advancing in security of supply and affordability. Therefore, this global picture will demand the generation of a new concept of connected ecosystem between energy system players and consumers. Under this scenario, the project consortium accepted this challenge and offers to develop the “REDREAM Project”, which not only will enable the effective participation of the consumers/prosumers in the energy market, but also will drive a profound change turning traditional company’s value chain into value generation chain, based on a revolutionary Service Dominant Logic paradigm. The main objective of the REDREAM project is to effectively move the consumer (as a residential, industrial and tertiary consumer) participation to the centre of the energy market through an open and co-creative ecosystem where all stakeholders will actively interact. This ambitious challenge will require the collection of demand response tools and services (energy and non-energy) capable of enabling the capacity for the consumers of participating in the energy market through an improvement of predictability of consumption patterns and consumer behaviour.

Efforts to induce energy-friendly behavior from end users through behavioral interventions are characterized by lack of customer personalization (“one-size-fits-all interventions”), partial understanding about how different interventions interact with each other and contrasting evidence about their effectiveness, as a result of poor testing under real world conditions. The NUDGE project has been conceived to unleash the potential of behavioral interventions for long-lasting energy efficiency behavior changes, paving the way to the generalized use of such interventions as a worthy addition to the policy-making toolbox. We take a mixed approach to the consumer analysis and intervention design tasks combining surveys and field trials. Firmly rooted in behavioral science methods, we study individual psychological and contextual variables underlying consumers’ behavior to tailor the design of behavioral interventions for them, with a clear bias towards interventions of the nudging type. The designed interventions are compared against traditional ones in field trials (pilots) in five different EU states, exhibiting striking diversity in terms of innovative energy usage scenarios (e.g., PV production for EV charging, DR for natural gas), demographic and socio-economic variables of the involved populations, mediation platforms for operationalizing the intervention (smart mobile apps, dashboards, web portals, educational material and intergenerational learning practices). We are a multidisciplinary team of 10 partners marking solid expertise in behavioral science, (mobile) user interface and policy design; synergies of different stakeholders (energy providers/cooperative/communities, consumer associations, technology providers); and extensive networks of expert groups, industrial & consumer associations amplifying our potential for tangible impact on policy-making at all levels.