The CSA Strategic Energy Technology for Industry in Europe (SET-IndEU) is responding to the call HORIZON-CL5-2022-D4-02-06, to propose a structured Secretariat for supporting and strengthening the activities and outcomes of the IWG6 on Energy Efficiency in Industry. The consortium will support the IWG6 to advance the monitoring and revision of the Action 6 Implementation Plan (IP) with the aim of reaching technology targets collectively across SET Plan countries making EU industry less energy, resource and emissions intensive and more competitive. For that purpose, the future needs of the process industry, the R&I targets, and the emerging policy priorities will all be taken into consideration by engaging the IWG6 stakeholders in key activities with industrial and research associations and fora, specifically strengthening the relations, dialogue and exchange with the other SET Plan IWGs and the ETIPs.

Increasing industrial uptake of project findings is at the heart of project SPRING. It is the essential building block for ensuring greater impact of SPIRE projects and therefore progress towards the SPIRE roadmap goals of increased resource and energy efficiency in the EU process industries. Instead of focusing on a small cluster of projects, SPRING has been developed to provide the mechanism to enhance the impact of all SPIRE projects. Project SPRING’s objective is to increase progress towards the SPIRE goals and enhance return on investment in projects by addressing the needs of those who make the decisions to adopt process innovations in industry and barriers to their adoption. It will do this by providing guidance to project participants, decision makers in industry and broader SPIRE stakeholders, enabling them collectively to: 1. Improve the articulation of the value of project exploitable outputs 2. Improve the articulation of industry needs and barriers-to-uptake of exploitable outputs 3. Improve the mapping of project value to industry needs 4. Identify policy gaps and recommendations to improve project impact To address these objectives, the project will deliver six sets of exploitable outputs: A – Guidance on best practice of how to measure progress, impact and success of SPIRE projects. B – Frameworks for getting different levels of project results to the right audience through the spire2030.eu portal C – A model for mapping project outputs to industry needs, through thematic, interactive industry workshops, expert input and technology scanning methods. D – Guidance for understanding business barriers to uptake, including best practice for enabling good decision making when evaluating project outputs. E – A package of training and network groups to upskill SPIRE project participants F – Identification of policy gaps and future SPIRE needs

Carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) has been recently recognised as a key technology to reduce carbon emissions, especially in hard-to-abate sectors, and significantly contribute to EU carbon neutrality targets for 2030 and 2050. Accelerating the upscaling and subsequent market introduction of CCUS research results and technologies is becoming thus increasingly urgent. The Horizon 2020 Programme (H2020) has contributed to the development of innovative technologies, including CCUS. The Innovation Fund Programme (IF) on the other hand, focuses on commercial demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies. The transition from mature H2020 projects to the IF is a logical pipeline along the TRL line. Synergies between these and other EU funding programmes can contribute substantially to overcome the hurdles and de-risk large scale investments in first-of-a-kind CCUS flagship projects, but still much remains to be done in accelerating go-to-market strategies for publicly funded innovations. LEADS aims at bridging the gap from research to deployment for CCUS projects in Europe by building an innovation pipeline of promising H2020/HEU projects and supporting project owners to overcome the main bottlenecks and reach final investment decision. Building on their outstanding experience in innovation and EU programmes, as well as leveraging on their strong EU networks, LEADS partners will implement a well-designed methodology and set of measures to assess and select the most promising H2020 projects, coach them and enable them to apply to IF. LEADS methodology will be tested with six H2020 CCUS project cases. A set of reusable IF tools will be created and made available to CCUS stakeholders. Synergy mechanisms between H2020 and IF will be also created by aligning the CCUS up-scaling potential with IF targets. At LEADS project end, at least three H2020 projects are expected to have completed the full LEADS cycle and have submitted a full IF application.

HARMONI aims at bringing together all the relevant stakeholders of the process industry to jointly identify, analyse and propose solutions to the regulatory bottlenecks and standardization needs that hamper their innovation processes and the market uptake of their results, necessary to move towards a more sustainable and competitive European process industry. In order to achieve HARMONI’s overarching goal, the consortium will develop and apply a methodology for ensuring an effective collaboration of the 8 sectors involved in SPIRE PPP to elaborate the solutions to the common challenges they face due to non-technological barriers, such as regulatory issues or the lack of European Standards when trying to improve their resource efficiency. In addition, HARMONI will analyse, compare and propose recommendations to trigger the transferability of technical solutions among and beyond the SPIRE sectors. The methodology will include the utilisation of the existing SPIRE Knowledge platform and the creation of another platform to be linked with CEN/CENELEC STAIR WG for the coordination of the project’s standardization activities. The project activities will result in an optimized EU regulatory and standardization framework that facilitates and supports innovation in the process industry; a better participation of the SPIRE community in the EU regulatory and procedures, thus providing the most adequate input to the regulatory authorities; an earlier and more active involvement of the SPIRE community in the EU standardization process; and an overall better environment to maximize transferability rates of technologies across SPIRE sectors. HARMONI consortium includes 3 SPIRE sectorial associations (chemicals, cement and equipment), A.SPIRE, 2 RTDs coming from two SPIRE sectors (steel, ceramic), 1 National Standardization body (DIN) and an experienced RTO to coordinate them (CIRCE). In addition, an Advisory Board will involve the other 5 SPIRE sectorial associations and CEN/CENELE

The 2DPLOY project aims to provide support to EIIs by assisting them in developing compelling proposals for the Innovation Fund. SINTEF, VITO, ASPIRE and RINA-CSM, as research partners of 2DPLOY consortium, have already identified and shortlisted five promising H2020 projects from industrial partners (CEINNMAT, EVONIK, OLEON) and VITO. The 2DEPLOY methodology will be tested starting with these 5 pilot projects, which will help establish and undergo the project's innovation pipeline. This pipeline consists of several key steps, including: 1) screening H2020 projects through a prequalification matrix and a 1-hour interview with an expert; and 2) an evaluation commission that aims to select only the most mature projects. 3) The chosen projects will then be able to participate in advanced masterclasses that cover six different topics related to the IF's key requirements, such as degree of innovation, scalability, potential for avoided GHG emissions, and technical and financial maturity. 4) Finally, 2DPLOY will offer personalized guidance and feedback to support the preparation of three sound proposals to be submitted to the IF. The 2DPLOY methodology will be constantly improved through a two-way learning strategy that involves collaborations and synergies with key industrial and EU stakeholders, such as the Innovation Fund, the Directorate-General for Climate Action, Processes4Planet, Clean Steel, Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, Batt4EU, and Clean Energy Transition. The activities and achievements developed within the scope of 2DPLOY can then be replicated by relevant HE Partnerships, to accelerate the deployment of mature, promising and high-impact innovations that come out of R&I projects, maybe combined with other de-risk mechanisms that can encourage innovation owners to invest in these technologies and, thus, pave the way for the decarbonisation of EII with European innovative technology.