Dandelion will promote the work done by inclusive, innovative and reflective societies’ projects on a local, regional and European level by developing and implementing a series of innovative and exciting communications activities aiming to inform, educate and entertain a wide cross section of the European population, policy makers, academics and media. By placing European economic and financial reform, the problems young people face in Europe, cultural heritage, European values and diversities, the EU's role as a global actor and the new forms of public sector innovation at the heart of these activities, by involving established science educators, by creating clear lines of communication between projects and named mass media and by utilising novel communications, Dandelion will ensure that inclusive, innovative and reflective societies’ ambitious philosophy is given the highest profile. By giving tools and guidelines to the dissemination managers towards general public, policy makers, academia and media Dandelion will guarantee an improved access to research projects’ data in the future.

With the five broad application areas of the BBI JU Scientific Innovation and Research Agenda, which defines the key areas around which projects should be developed, at its core, the BIOWAYS action will develop excellent promotional and educational materials and design and implement pubic engagement activities, based on this material. These activities will be focused on promoting bio-based industries and the huge potential of their products. BIOWAYS intends to meet the need for better communication of bio-based products and applications and the benefits they bring. In order to attain this ambitious challenge, the BIOWAYS Consortium proposes providing a wide range of integrated, high-level activities and tools with recognised added value for communication programmes, having EU Citizens as their main target. Tools being developed to achieve this include an innovative online collaboration platform and social network, an accessible library of bio-based products, the development of training materials, social hack days, co-creation workshops, an eConference, BarCamps and thematic Charettes.

The growing share of variable renewable energy necessitates flexibility in the electricity system, which flexible energy generation, demand side participation and energy storage systems can provide. SIMBLOCK will develop innovative demand response (DR) services for smaller residential and commercial customers, implement and test these services in three pilot sites and transfer successful DR models to customers of Project partners in further European countries. The pilot sites are blocks of highly energy efficient buildings with a diverse range of renewable and cogeneration supply systems and requisite ICT infrastructure that allows direct testing of DR strategies. SIMBLOCK’s main objectives are to specify the technical characteristics of the demand flexibility that will enable dynamic DR; to study the optimal use of the DR capability in the context of market tariffs and RES supply fluctuations; and to develop and implement market access and business models for DR models offered by blocks of buildings with a focus on shifting power to heat applications and optimization of the available energy vectors in buildings. Actions toward achieving these objectives include: quantifying the reliability of bundled flexibility of smaller buildings via pilot site monitoring schemes; combining innovative automated modelling and optimization services with big data analytics to deliver the best real time DR actions, including motivational user interfaces and activation programs; and developing new DR services that take into account the role of pricing, cost effectiveness, data policies, regulations, and market barriers to attain the critical mass needed to effectively access electricity markets. SIMBLOCK’s approach supports the Work Program by maximizing the contribution of buildings and occupants and combining decentralized energy management technology at the blocks of building scale to enable DR, thereby illustrating the benefits achievable (e.g. efficiency, user engagement, cost).

Europe's position in the production of biochemicals from biomass and by-products is limited to a few compounds, while their demand is among the largest in the world. However, Europe has a lot of world leader chemical companies. On the other hand, lignocellulosic waste constitutes one of the most abundant resources without competing with food chain. REHAP’s 16 partners aim at revalorizing agricultural (wheat straw) and forestry (bark) waste through its recovery, and primary (sugars, lignin, tannins) and secondary (sugar acids, carboxylic acids, aromatics and resins) processing to turn them into novel materials, and considering Green Building as business case. The project will provide reductions in utilization of fossil resources of 80-100%, and energy utilization and CO2 emissions above 30%. Specifically, building blocks (1,4 and 2,3-Butanediol, estherpolyols), materials (PUs, phenolic resins, modified hydrolysis lignin) and products (wooden boards, insulation foams, cement, adhesive) will be obtained: • Isolation of tannins and carbohydrates from forestry waste to turn them into bio-phenolic resins for wooden panels and isocyanate-free polyurethanes (PU) for insulating foams, respectively. • Isolation of lignin and carbohydrates from agricultural waste to turn them into bio-phenolic resins for wooden panels and biosuperplasticizers for cement, and estherpolyol PU for adhesives, respectively. • Fire retardant lignin and sugar-based additives will be also developed. Developed processing technologies (chemo/thermo/enzymatic and fermentation) will be optimized at pilot scale (TRL6-7) for further exploitation and replication of results. All products will be integrated in a prototype to demonstrate industrial applicability into the Green Construction sector. Throughout the project, Life Cycle and Cost Assessment, market analysis, business plan, waste management strategy and measures for future standardization will be implemented using a systemic perspective approach.