The objective of SHEER is to develop best practices for assessing and mitigating the environmental footprint of shale gas exploration and exploitation. The consortium includes partners from Italy, United Kingdom, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, USA. It will develop a probabilistic procedure for assessing short and long-term risks associated with groundwater contamination, air pollution and induced seismicity. The severity of each of these depends strongly on the unexpected enhanced permeability pattern, which may develop as an unwanted by-product of the fracking processes and may become pathway for gas and fluid migration towards underground water reservoirs or the surface. An important part of SHEER will be devoted to monitor and understand how far this enhanced permeability pattern will develop both in space and time. These hazard may be at least partially inter-related as they all depend on this enhanced permeability pattern. Therefore they will be approached from a multi-hazard, multi parameter perspective. SHEER will develop methodologies and procedures to track and model fracture evolution around shale gas exploitation sites and a robust statistically based, multi-parameter methodology to assess environmental impacts and risks across the operational lifecycle of shale gas. The developed methodologies will be applied and tested on a comprehensive database consisting of seismicity, changes of the quality of ground-waters and air, ground deformations, and operational data collected from past case studies. They will be improved by the high quality data SHEER will collect monitoring micro-seismicity, air and groundwater quality and ground deformation in a planned hydraulic fracturing to be carried out by the Polish Oil and Gas Company in Pomerania. Best practices to be applied in Europe to monitor and minimize any environmental impacts will be worked out with the involvement of an advisory group including governmental decisional bodies and private industries.

One of the main challenges for the education systems in Europe is to increase the low level of basic skills achievement, including math and science. STEM education is often carried out in a schematic manner, regardless actual conditions, and is focused on preparation for external exams instead of real development of skills and interests. Technological development and dissemination of research results, which are obligatory in most projects co-financed with the public funds, contribute to increase the availability and open access to research results shared by leading research centers. This allows to increase the attractiveness of science education through the introduction of real scientific results into school practice and to familiarize students with scientific work through contacts with scientists. This requires diligent preparation of materials and equipping teachers in good quality, comprehensive teaching materials and educational resources, and showing the benefits of using inquiry-based learning methods and getting familiar with scientific methods of work. The aim of the project was to increase interest of students in lower and upper secondary schools in mathematics and science, and in making a scientific career through the development, pilot implementation and dissemination of educational packages and methodological materials which allow the exploitation of research results in education systems in 3 European countries. The project was dedicated to teachers of mathematics and science, and students from at least 30 schools: lower and upper secondary schools in each partner country: Poland, Romania and France. ERIS project was divided into 2 parts: testing phase and dissemination phase. In the testing phase teaching materials (total: 60 packages) in national languages and in English to work with students in lower and upper secondary schools were prepared. Packages were tested in schools, which enrolled for the testing phase in each partner country. Packages were adapted to the needs of end-users: teachers and students, according to the results of the evaluation studies. In the dissemination phase all interested schools in partner countries, as well as in whole Europe, had the opportunity to take part in the project for free. They may use prepared packages during their lessons and take part in the webcasts of online lessons conducted by scientist in national languages and in English. Such virtual meetings with scientists give a closer look at the specificity of scientific work, the measurements and research in the field of mathematics and science. That meetings can also be an inspiration for students and encourage them to continue an independent exploration of science. Moreover, a guide for teachers on the effective exploitation of research results in school practice with examples of good practice in this area and the project website containing teaching materials were prepared. In addition, in the dissemination phase conferences and workshops for teachers were organised, which helped to increase the level of use of project‘s products among schools that have not participated in the testing phase. The success of these activities is proved by transferring of packages to almost 1000 users.Furthermore, the project contributes to the growth of students' ability to search for reliable sources of knowledge, which is important in today's world overloaded with information. Usage of modern technologies and forms of communication (e.g. teleconferencing system that allows students to participate in international broadcasts) also positively affects the increase of interest in STEM. Participation in the project allowed schools to exchange experiences and establish Pan-European cooperation. Participation in online lessons and usage of educational resources in English contributed to the increase of students’ language skills and expand specialized vocabulary in STEM. It may be very useful for future students of STEM studies, which are crucial for knowledge-based economy of Europe. In the long term, the project will also help to increase the understanding of the language of science and scientific messages.

Europe’s shortage of STEM skilled labour force is well documented, and the lack of STEM-skilled labour is predicted to be “one of the main obstacles to economic growth in the coming years”. There is a real need, at the European level, for innovative approaches to increasing the motivation of pupils towards STEM subjects and for offering teacher training into new ways of introducing science to the classroom. Additionally, there is still work to be done in improving the image of scientists at the societal level and demystifying science in general, if academic institutions are to attract much needed talent in their various fields. To meet these challenges, BRITEC proposed introducing research into classrooms through Citizen Science activities, co-designed between schools and research institutions, initially in the partner countries and with the long-term view of massive uptake in Europe and beyond. Citizen Science is a relatively new way of conducting scientific research, by enlisting the support of citizens into the data collection, data analysis, data interpretation and/or (in rare cases) data presentation. BRITEC proposed introducing the Citizen Science (CS) approach in schools as a way of connecting schools with the world of research and increasing the interest of young Europeans in STEM subjects and careers. BRITEC offers schools and research institutions a multi-stakeholder collaboration model, easy to replicate, to support the promotion and uptake of STEM studies and careers. To build this model, BRITEC suggested a bottom-up approach, including three complementary blocks of activities, which build on each other to develop a set of exemplary practices and guidelines for the implementation of Citizen Science in the classroom and to ensure their large-scale dissemination and uptake: 1. A foundational phase, including desk research into existing national and international citizen science initiatives and the development of a set of guidelines of introducing research into schools. 2. A Piloting Phase, during which teachers and researchers from each of the four participating countries (Belgium, Greece, Poland and Spain) co-defined and ran a number of Citizen Science projects in their countries. Exemplary practices feed into the Citizen Science toolkit for the large-scale implementation of CS in countries all across Europe. 3. The large-scale deployment phase, including the development and running of a Massive Open Online Course and a set of recommendations for policy makers, meant to ensure that the good practices resulted from the project jump from the initial set of participants to other schools and universities/research institutions interested in bringing innovation to STEM teaching. Through these actions, BRITEC aimed to: [1] expose pupils to real-life research actions and allow them to develop skills and competencies related to STEM through learning by doing [2] strengthen the dialogue between research institutions and schools, and the role of educational institutions in their local and regional environments [3] raise the profile of teachers by allowing them to become research coordinators in their schools [4] ensure that good practices which support the development of STEM skills are adequately disseminated to a large population of teachers throughout Europe and beyond.The main participants of the BRITEC activities were: teachers, researchers and students. Additional group benefiting from the BRITEC outcomes: heads of schools, parents, local communities, ministries of education, policy makers in the field of education. We reached directly over 1300 persons and assume that additionally ca. 6000 students benefitted from the BRITEC programme.

Science4CleanEnergy, S4CE, is a multi-disciplinary consortium, of world-leading academics, research laboratories, SMEs and industries. S4CE will develop a project that includes fundamental studies of fluid transport and reactivity, development of new instruments and methods for the detection and quantification of emissions, micro-seismic events etc., lab and field testing of such new technologies, and the deployment of the successful detection and quantification technologies in sub-surface sites for continuous monitoring of the risks identified by the European Commission. S4CE leverages approximately 500M EUR in existing investments on 4 scientific field sites. S4CE will utilize monitoring data acquired during the project in these field sites on which (a) it will be possible to quantify the environmental impact of sub-surface geo-energy applications; (b) new technologies will be demonstrated; (c) data will be collected during the duration of the project, and potentially after the end of the project. Using reliable data, innovative analytical models and software, S4CE will quantify the likelihood of environmental risks ranging from fugitive emissions, water contamination, induced micro-seismicity, and local impacts. Such quantifications will have enormous positive societal consequences, because environmental risks will be prevented and mitigated. S4CE set up a probabilistic methodology to assess and mitigate both the short and the long term environmental risks connected to the exploration and exploitation of sub-surface geo-energy. S4CE will maintain a transparent dialogue with all stakeholders, including the public at large, the next generation of scientists, academics and industrial operators, including training of young post-graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. S4CE will deliver the independent assessment of the environmental footprint related to geo-energy sub-surface operations, having as primary impact the assistance to to policy making.