Eurostat data reveals that the 11% of the total population of the European Union is unable to keep their home adequately warm. Caused by low household income, high energy bills, and low dwelling energy efficiency, energy poverty has traditionally been associated with the inability of households to meet their heating needs during winter. However, up to the 19% of households declared not being comfortably cool in summer. Nine of the 10 warmest years have occurred since 2005, with the last five years comprising the five hottest. Not to mention this 2019 June has been the hottest on record. Climate change is increasing both the severity and frequency of extreme hot weather and heat waves and in dense urban areas, these heatwave episodes will be combined with the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, worsening city centres temperatures which will negatively impact human health and wellbeing. Thus, cooling needs and overheating risk need to be incorporated into the energy poverty equation. The project COOLtoRISE aims to reduce summer energy poverty incidence among European households improving their indoor thermal habitability conditions and reducing their energy needs during the hot season, which will decrease their exposure to heat and heat-related health risks. Not all households have an air conditioning system and it is known that energy poor households make a restrictive use of heating and cooling as they cannot afford associated energy bills. However, raising awareness on summer energy poverty and implementing actions to mitigate it will have a double benefit on European households. First, heat exposure of energy poor households will be reduced by increasing indoor thermal conditions, which will decrease in their risk to suffer heat related diseases. Second, raising summer energy culture and preventing air conditioning devices to be installed can have serious benefits on climate change preventing future emissions.

Europe has witnessed a significant rise in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, and especially the broader Mediterranean region showcases the devastating consequences of climate-related disruptions. CLIMRES aims to foster a ‘Leadership foEurope has witnessed a significant rise in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, and especially the broader Mediterranean region showcases the devastating consequences of climate-related disruptions. Unseasonably warm temperatures during the winter months are increasingly becoming a pattern, disrupting traditional weather patterns and ecosystems. CLIMRES aims to foster a ‘Leadership for Climate Resilient Buildings’, by addressing the identification and systematic categorisation of buildings’ vulnerabilities and estimating their impact in the buildings' ecosystem considering the interlinkages within the urban context. The project will deliver vulnerability assessment and impact evaluation methodologies along with an inventory hub of measures for building materials and design against climate risks and a decision support toolkit addressing three levels of decision making at strategic, tactical and operational levels. CLIMRES solutions will be tested in 3 large scale pilots in Spain, Greece, Italy and Slovenia evaluating their efficacy against heatwaves, extreme flooding, fires and earthquakes and one multi-hazard replication multiplier pilot in France. The experiences and lessons learnt from the extensive pilot evaluation will consult the replication roadmap of the project as well as a capacity building programme that will train the next frontier leaders for climate resilient buildings. Overall, the CLIMRES Leadership will provide valuable insights and guidance for building owners, policymakers, and stakeholders involved in building climate resilience and sustainable development, through the co-creation, development, deployment and demonstration at TRL 6-8 highly cost-effective and replicable solutions.

Numerous attempts of implementing transition pathways across Europe illustrate the difficulty of designing policies that combine efficient climate action and justice considerations. One reason is that the socially diverse, and thus also geographically dispersed demands and vulnerabilities of potentially affected groups do not appear as a well-structured input at any stage of the policy-making process. Therefore, TANDEM will test an innovative transdisciplinary approach in five different case studies in Spain, Belgium, Finland, Poland and Austria that address controversial transition policies in energy and mobility affecting urban and rural populations. The TANDEM project aims to design a methodology allowing policy makers to create and implement inclusive and just transition pathways by involving potentially affected citizens, public authorities, the private sector and other relevant stakeholders. It relies on combination of accessible and complementary methods: deliberative visioning build on art-based approaches, system mapping, assessment and appraisal methods. These methods constitute the backbone of a series of three deliberation panels with citizens. In these panels TANDEM invites participants to create their visions, perspectives and narratives on just transition policies and to define their own criteria and interventions. This deliberation process will guide a systemic impact assessment that will inform individual appraisals of the interventions. Public authorities will be involved at the beginning and end of each panel to provide insights on political, social and economic factors that should be taken into consideration. Furthermore, private companies will be invited to participate through interviews and surveys. TANDEM will thus develop a transdisciplinary approach to identify and analyse emerging inequalities of low-carbon transition policies, as well as to co-design socially fair and effective alternative transition pathways with stakeholders.

V2Market is an innovative service to incorporate the Electric Vehicles’ (EV) batteries into the electricity system as storage and flexibility capacity, using Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and Vehicle-to-Building (V2B) technology combined with energy efficiency (EE) and price forecasting ICT tools. V2Market puts together all the relevant actors in the value chain to work on the definition of the role and the contractual arrangements of a new business case, the aggregator, and its different possibilities with the other key stakeholders: the EV owners, and the flexibility buyers (DSO, TSO, BRP). V2Market will tackle energy efficiency at different levels: - Efficiency at the system level, by providing flexibility services to the grid. - Efficiency at the building/end user level, by optimising energy management thanks to the incorporation of the EV battery, which will also facilitate an optimisation of the energy produced by local RES. - Efficiency resulting from the substitution of older fossil-fuel based vehicles for electric vehicles. - It will make the EV battery an independent asset (as a major cost item that needs to be managed separately). This will result in measurable energy savings and performance improvements for the overall energy system. To respond to these EE needs, V2Market will develop a comprehensive business case for aggregators based on two types of service: A – Provision of ancillary services to the grid (frequency regulation, spinning reserves, peak shifting). B – Integration of flexibility services with EE at buildings’ level. V2Market will help the aggregator to develop its business model, and use big data to tailor its services to the patterns of its pool of EV owners. This is intended to consolidate a more predictable pool of EV batteries, which can be useful to develop also contractual arrangements with the flexibility buyers and provide stability to all the transactions within the value chain.

The residential sector has a significant role to play in achieving the EUs binding target of 32.5% energy efficiency saving by 2030. Recent EU Directives have advanced definitions for two types of energy communities. A ‘Renewable Energy Community’ and a ‘Citizens Energy Community’. While there are similarities between the two, there are key differences - their structure and ability to participate as a market actor. There is limited available information published in an approachable manner that explains these differences. Thus organising an energy community requires a great deal of expertise. The regular consumer often feels side-lined and unable to participate. The UP-STAIRS project addresses these issues with a goal to accelerate the growth of energy communities by providing a common framework. UP-STAIRS removes the barriers to citizen participation in the transition from a consumer-market to a ‘prosumer-market’. This transition requires active learning and participation from all stakeholders. The UP-STAIRS Energy Service Framework enables Local Authorities and Citizens to work together through a common structure embodied in a one-stop-shop. This common structure includes business models and decision support for energy assessment of a community’s energy potential. UP-STAIRS provides a full service information repository on policy and regulatory advice which will give the UP-STAIRS Implementation Champion the confidence to understand the impact that their energy community can make into the market. Community support is through a compendium of energy tutorials on key topics including behaviour change, prosumerism, collective actions and their benefit to consumers, and what it means to become an energy citizen in a sustainable energy community. The UP-STAIRS project consists of 1 RPO, 1 NGO, 1 consultancy organisation, 1 SME, 1 National Energy Authority, 1 Regional Energy Authority, 3 Municipalities/city councils and 1 consumer organisation from 7 member states.