Worldwide Data centers (DC) are estimated to account for 1 to 2% of electricity usage. Regarding the European context, it is expected that data centres will account for 98.5 TWh/year in 2030. So it is evident that there is an important potential to recover waste heat from the cooling processes of DCs. The THUNDER project aims to overcome existing barriers hampering a wide adoption of DCs waste heat recovery strategies, providing an innovative, efficient and cost attractive Seasonal Thermal storage based on Thermochemical Materials. THUNDER solutions stretch across the value chain (data centre innovative storage providers, heat pump manufacturers and district energy company operators). The THUNDER solutions will be validated in field conditions at the Demosite in Bulgaria where the practice of WHR from DC is not widely diffused thus boosting the market also in those areas. Deepened replicability assessment will be done and pre-feasibility analysis developed in 10 further Demosites across all over Europe. Co-design and training workshops will be organized at the replicability identified sites to promote stakeholders engagement and social awareness thus unlocking barriers and make it real THUNDER replication.

WalNUT aims to develop the necessary concepts and technological solutions to re-design the value and supply chains of nutrients from waste water and brine, while staying in line with the objectives of the EIP on Agrifood and Raw Materials. A wide range of technological processes (physico-chemical, electro-chemical, biological) will be validated in labscale. 5 pilot plants for the nutrient recovery from waste water and brine will be tailored by combining multiple process units selected from the pool of technologies studied at lab scale and from partners previous relevant projects. The pilot plants will target not only high nutrient recovery efficiencies but also minimisation of environmental impacts. Thorough quality assessment of the resulting products shall be made in order to establish a concrete view of their market positioning. The multicriteria evaluation of pilot plants performance as well as the use of LCA, LCC, sLCA, will lead to the efficient validation of the technologies reaching TRL 4-6. Also, the project aims to create and disseminate a new paradigm shift from waste water and brine treatment to resource recovery which is essential for EU to sustain industries and societies for the long-term. Public and scientific awareness of the project will be raised and all relevant stakeholders will be informed about the possible pathways for waste water and brine valorisation. The project will be implemented by a consortium composed of partners with varied and complimentary experience, qualifications, skills and perspectives including research institutes, technology providers and industrial partners involved in waste water management. The involvement of representatives covering the whole supply chain of waste water, brine and nutrient recovery will provide an excellent opportunity to showcase the full potential of waste water and brine as a raw material for biofertilisers production.

AI spreading in the energy sector is expected to dramatically reshape energy value chain in the next years, by improving business processes performance, while increasing environmental sustainability, strengthening social relationships and propagating high social value among citizens. However, uncertain business cases, fragmented regulations, standards immaturity and low-technical SMEs workforce skills barriers are actually hampering the full exploitation of AI along the energy value chain. I-NERGY will deliver: (i) Financing support through Open Calls to third parties SMEs for new energy use cases and technology building blocks validation, as well as for developing new AI-based energy services, while fully aligning to AI4EU service requirements and strengthening the SME competitiveness on AI for energy; (b) An open modular framework for supporting AI-on-Demand in the energy sector by capitalising on state-of-the-art AI, IoT, semantics, federated learning, analytics tools, which leverage on edge-level AI-based cross-sector multi-stakeholder sovereignty and regulatory preserving interoperable data handling. I-NERGY aims at evolving, scaling up and demonstrating innovative AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) Energy Analytics Applications and digital twins services that will be validated along 9 pilots, which: (a) Span over the full energy value chain, ranging from optimised management of grid and non-grid RES assets, improved efficiency and reliability of electricity networks operation, optimal risk assessment for energy efficiency investments planning, optimising local and virtual energy communities involvement in flexibility and green energy marketplaces; (b) Delivers other energy and non-energy services to realise synergies among energy commodities (district heating, buildings) and with non-energy sectors (i.e. e-mobility, personal safety/security, AAL), and with non- or low-technical domains end users (i.e. elderly people).

Traditional silo approaches, where stakeholders manage their own data, could be replaced by digital and smart buildings, merging heterogeneous data sources, and placing the stakeholders as the core of these buildings. DigiBUILD will catalyse this much-needed transformation by making use of high-quality data and next generation digital building services, supporting the deployment of EU-wide Framework for a Digital Building Logbook. An inclusive environment for multi-stakeholder knowledge exchange (based on European Bauhaus initiative) will be applied to co-design end-user-oriented services. DigiBUILD will provide an open, interoperable and cloud-based toolbox to transform current ‘silo’ buildings into digital, interoperable and smarter ones, based on consistent and reliable data, supporting better-informed decision-making for performance monitoring & assessment, planning of building infrastructure, policy making and de-risking investments. It will be built on top of existing platforms and common EU initiatives, towards an Energy Efficient Building Data Space, based on standard cloud-data platform frameworks (FIWARE) and Data Space initiatives (GAIA-X and IDSA). On top of this advanced data governance framework, we will create AI-based data analytics and Digital Building Twins based on high-quality data, aiming to facilitate transparency, trust, informed decision-making and information sharing within the built environment and construction sector, which will be deployed across 10 real-world conditions (TRL 8). DigiBUILD will contribute to the uptake of digital technologies in the building sector to better align the EU Member States’ long-term renovation strategies with the EPBD requirements on decarbonisation, and on a path towards a climate-neutral building stock by 2050.