BUILDINTEREST will structurally improve the financeability and attractiveness of investments in renewable energy or energy efficiency in buildings by creating three national sustainable energy financing platforms. Investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency are currently sub-optimal, forming an important bottleneck for Europe to reach its 20-20-20 targets. Particularly in the building sector, projects require high upfront investments, have high perceived risk, have to deal with complex planning and stakeholder issues, and suffer from split incentives. Since the building sector is also one of the largest energy users in Europe and faces a major and sustained investment challenge, BUILDINTEREST focuses on addressing financial issues in investment in sustainable energy and energy efficiency measures in buildings. BUILDINTEREST will develop three national sustainable energy financing platforms: in The Netherlands (Duurzaam Gebouwd), Italy (ASTER) and France (BPIFrance). These platforms will create a structural dialogue between the building and financial sector and develop essential tools and financial instruments that will increase attractiveness of investments in sustainable energy in buildings. BUILDINTEREST will also develop a roadmap, describing the barriers in financing sustainable energy investments as well as their solutions, and presenting a practical approach to the implementation of these solutions, from financial instruments and contract arrangements to calculation tools and policy measures. The project will also facilitate the implementation of these solutions by the building and financial sector during project operation. To further increase its impact, BUILDINTEREST aims at rapid replication of the national platforms in other European countries. Among other activities, 6 large-scale (inter)national events are organized during the project. BUILDINTEREST will reduce uncertainty regarding investments in sustainable buildings, and increased investors' confidence and trust.

CARBAFIN will develop, based on an integrated biocatalytic production technology, a radically new value chain for the utilisation of surplus sucrose from sugar beet biomass in the EU. CARBAFIN will demonstrate bio-based co-production of a functional glucoside and fructose. The glucoside products of CARBAFIN (glucosylglycerol, cellodextrin) have large-scale uses in nutrition and feed, cosmetics and detergents. Fructose is exploited in the production of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a versatile chemical building block currently considered for making bio-based plastics. Leading platform technologies in biocatalytic cell factories and downstream processing, conjointly optimised in CARBAFIN for performance efficiency and cost-effectiveness under full integration of LCA and economic evaluation, are key to make industrial co-production of glycosides and HMF via fructose competitive in today's markets. In addition, CARBAFIN contributes to the establishment of new, fully renewables-based value chains across the European industries, linking the sugar industry sector to the cosmetics, chemicals, polymer and detergents sectors and strengthening the sugar industries' role in food and feed. It supports the efficient cascading use of sugar beet-derived sucrose in combination with biomass-derived base chemicals (e.g. glycerol, glucose). CARBAFIN's HMF production aims at replacing petroleum-based chemicals with bio-based building blocks. CARBAFIN will thus contribute to development of a chemical industry that is low-carbon, resource-efficient and sustainable. CARBAFIN will help Europe to maintain global leadership in industrial biotechnology and secure position as innovation leader in sugar-based products. CARBAFIN's innovations will involve broadly the engagement of societal actors with particular emphasis on consumer awareness and acceptance.

The EQUAL4EUROPE consortium consists of six Research Performing Institutions (RPI) with a clear focus on arts, humanities, medicine, social sciences, business and law (AHMSSBL), and two international accreditation organisations (one as full partner, one as associate partner). Whereas in the past, gender equality was especially recognized as an issue by science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) RPIs, it is now also recognized by AHMSSBL institutions. However, information for this type of institutions is not yet widely available. Within this project, we will develop free knowledge, tools and best practices for AHMSSBL institutions related to: 1. Removing barriers to the recruitment, retention and career progression of female researchers; 2. Addressing gender imbalances in decision making processes; and, 3. Integrating the gender dimension in research and innovation content. More specifically, the six RPIs will develop and implement tailored Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in order to realize sustainable cultural and institutional change, an impartial (impact) assessment will be developed and executed, and a network for GE officers from AHMSSBL institutions will be established. Since the consortium aims to maximize the impact, the two accreditation organisations will investigate the possibilities to include the project results into their existing international accreditation frameworks for business schools (with European and global reach). Through their networks, the consortium will be able to reach out to a very large audience. The partners are all complementary to each other, each contributing specific expertise to the project. This expertise will be effectively used during the project which consist of 8 work packages and has a duration of 48 months.

Five tonnes of waste per capita are generated every year in the EU. These annual 2.5 billion tonnes of waste contain large volumes of valuable materials for Europe’s industrial base. Proper collection of waste is a pre-condition for their optimal recovery. The current trend of increasing higher collection rates is promising, but progress is uneven between Members States and between regions. Good regional practices have the potential to serve as good practice examples for other regions. So far, however, results of existing studies and good practices have not been effective enough in supporting the implementation of better-performing systems elsewhere. The main objective of the COLLECTORS project is to overcome this situation and to support decision-makers in shifting to better-performing collection system. COLLECTORS will therefore: (1) Increase awareness of the collection potential by compiling, harmonizing and presenting information on systems for packaging and paper waste, WEEE and construction products via an online information platform. (2) Improve decision-making on waste collection by the assessment of twelve good practices on their performance on: (1) quality of collected waste; (2) economics; (3) environment; (4) societal acceptance. (3) Stimulate successful implementation by capacity-building and policy support methods that will increase the technical and operational expertise of decision-makers on waste collection. (4) Engage citizens, decision-makers and other stakeholders throughout the project for validation of project results and to ensure the usability of COLLECTORS-output. The COLLECTORS consortium is well-equipped to achieve these impacts as it is directly connected to more than 30 PROS and 2000+ authorities spread across the EU. In addition, the project is embedded in the full secondary raw material value chain ensuring alignment with waste management, recyclers and producers.

In the ARBAHEAT project an existing 731 MWe Ultra-SuperCritical coal-fired power plant will be transformed into a biomass-fired Combined Heat and Power plant by repowering with thermally-treated biomass produced on-site. This demonstration encompasses: (1) Transformation into CHP: This will be demonstrated by delivering a minor amount of heat to the on-site biomass treatment process, while envisaging large-volume heat delivery to nearby industry. This will provide renewable local heat, enhancing the overall efficiency of the plant from 46% electricity-only to 70-90% in CHP mode, (2) Biomass feedstock: An integrated thermal pre-treatment process will enable utilisation of diverse sustainable biomass feedstock. This will minimise investment and operating cost while broadening the possibilities in term of geographical feedstock sourcing and quality (3) Biomass pre-treatment: The thermal biomass upgrading process of ARBAFLAME will deliver biomass fuel with handling and milling characteristics approaching that of coal, allowing for retrofitting with minimal adaptations to the existing power plant. The technical capacity of the demonstration plant will allow for maximum flexibility in upscaling the technology for future replication, (4) Integration into power plant: The biomass pre-treatment and heat delivery system will be physically integrated within the existing power plant. Eliminating several cost and energy intensive steps (steam production, pelletizing) will be investigated, towards more cost-effective final design. This demonstration of an integrated very low-costs concept in large-scale energy production will pave the way to subsequent multiplication in commercial industrial projects, thus increasing the EU capacity for renewable power and heat generation. The renewable ARBAHEAT solution therefore has the potential to significantly contribute to the replacement of fossil-fuel in the heat and power sectors and increase the decarbonisation of the energy market.