The AGRICORE project proposes a novel tool for improving the current capacity to model policies dealing with agriculture by taking advantage of latest progresses in modelling approaches and ICT. Specifically, the AGRICORE tool will be built as an agent-based approach where each farm is to be modelled as an autonomous decision-making entity which individually assesses its own context and makes decisions on the basis of its current situation and expectations. This modelling approach will allow to simulate the interaction between farms and their context (which will account for environment, rural integration, ecosystem services, land use and markets) at various geographic scales – from regional to global. To do so, advances in big data, artificial intelligence algorithms, mathematical solvers and cloud computing services will be applied to optimise the extremely-long parameterisation and calibration phase required by current agent-based tools, to better mimic the modelling of farmers’ behaviour and interactions, to credibly assess the local effects of global events and EU policies, and in general to improve policy design, impact assessments and monitoring. The AGRICORE tool will be made as a highly modular and customisable suite, and it will be released as an open-source project so institutions can transparently update and improve the tool as needs arise.

Borkum is an island of about 30 km2 and 5,500 residents, located 20 miles from the north-western coast of Germany. Following concerns of the population regarding air quality due to a new coal fired power plant, Borkum started on a path towards renewable energy many years ago. Following several initiatives in that direction including a citizen dialogue, the island decided to become emission-free and fully decarbonized by 2030. Within this framework, the ISLANDER project will showcase the process of making Borkum a fully autonomous and decarbonised island energy system. Specifically, the project will focus on delivering: a) Distributed RESS systems (Renewable Energy + Small-scale Storage). b) Complementary short-to-seasonal, large-scale electricity storage. c) Seawater district heating coupled with heat storage and sized for 100 residential units, to make use of the heat of the North Sea water as a source of heating and cooling. d) Deployment of an EV charging network. e) A smart IT platform conceived to holistically perform the optimal aggregation of all these components while also implementing Demand Response (DR). f) An optimisation tool to optimally design zero-carbon island energy systems. To achieve such 2030 objectives of financing and maintaining the further roll-out of renewables and storage technologies across the island, the ISLANDER partners will facilitate the kick-start of a Renewable Energy Community in Borkum right during the project following a concrete roadmap. Additionally, and as part of an ambitious plan to replicate the project results, the partners have developed a 3-wave replication strategy including: Wave 1) Replication in the Follower islands, Wave 2) Replication in the related archipelagos. Wave 3) Further replication to the rest of EU islands.

The project will deploy and demonstrate local storage technologies which have reached TRL 5-6 in a real electrical grid, and will develop ICT tools to exploit the synergies between them, the smart grid and the citizens. The demonstration in this real environment will be driven by five use cases covering low voltage and medium voltage scenarios and a wide range of applications and functionalities. Viable business models will be defined for the cases, and proposal for changes in regulations will be made. Dissemination and exploitation activities will ensure these results drive market uptake of storage technologies. The expected outcomes of the project are: - An energy management system to be used by the energy companies to manage the energy of their associates´ storage devices. - Control systems to integrate management and decision support tools that enable the integration of renewable generation, forecasting and storage systems into the smart-grid. - Innovative storage solutions: • HESS (Hybrid Energy Storage System – Ultracapacitors + Li-ion batteries) • Second Life Electric Vehicle Batteries • Home Hybrid technologies (Ultracapacitors + Li-ion batteries) - Business models to allow easier deployment of energy storage technologies into the electricity market - Proposed changes to regulators in the social and economic areas in order to lower barriers to the deployment of distributed storage for the defined use cases. - Life Cycle Assessment / Life Cycle Cost of the storage systems used in the project The project will achieve topic expected impacts and also environmental and socioeconomic impacts, like carbon emissions reduction and lowering the EU dependency of fossil fuels. The project gives Energy Services Companies (ESCO) a main role in the deployment and exploitation of storage solutions. The consortium foresees the creation of an ESCO to exploit demonstrated business models after the project. The consortium is designed to meet the requirements of this innovation action, with strong industrial members, innovative SMEs, research organizations, experts, DSO and a follower smart-city. This consortium is capable of bringing innovative technologies to socioeconomically viable solutions.

CUSTOM-ART aims at developing the next generation of building and product integrated photovoltaic modules (BIPV and PIVP respectively), based on earth-abundant and fully sustainable thin film technologies. Nowadays, BIPV and PIPV are identified as key enabling technologies to make “near Zero Energy Buildings” and “net Zero Energy Districts” more realistic, through the integration of a new generation of photovoltaic modules capable of entirely replacing architectural/mobility/urban-furniture passive elements. This promising scenario of mass realisation of BIPV and PIPV solutions can only be achieved by developing cost-efficient and sustainable thin film technologies with unbeatable aesthetic functionalities, including mechanical flexibility and optical tuneability. Unfortunately, mature materials already available at the market such as Cu(In,Ga)Se2 or CdTe are formed by scarce and expensive elements (In, Ga and Te), or toxic ones (Cd). Considering this, CUSTOM-ART will join for the first time a leading group of companies and academic partners all around Europe, to develop advanced BIPV and PIPV products (flexible and semi-transparent solar modules), based on earth abundant kesterite materials, which have been demonstrated in two previous European projects to be at the forefront of emerging inorganic thin film technologies. By combining advanced strategies for materials properties management, with customized modules design in a circular economy approach, two types of products will be developed including flexible PV modules (polymer and steel supports) and semi-transparent (polymer). CUSTOM-ART will bring these technologies from TRL4-5 up to TRL7, demonstrating very competitive conversion efficiencies (20% at cell and 16% at module level) and durability (over 35 years), at a reduced production cost (< 75 €/m2), using exclusively abundant elements and contributing to ensure the full sustainability and competitiveness of the European BIPV and PIPV Industry.

In SCALE-UP 3 advanced urban nodes Antwerp, Madrid and Turku, team up around 1 main goal: develop data-driven and user centric strategies to accelerate the take-up of smart, clean and inclusive mobility, by means of well-connected and multi-usage urban nodes, to the level needed to meet EU climate and transport objectives. To reach the main goal, 5 strategic objectives are defined: - Improve multi-level and multi-stakeholder governance enabling seamless multimodal transport across urban nodes - Develop (inter)connected and multimodal nodes for passengers and freight as a backbone of a resilient mobility system, including network optimisations -Develop data driven mobility strategies and tools to stimulate seamless multimodal transport of passengers and freight and optimise network capacity across the wider urban area - Provide access to inclusive clean and safe mobility solutions - Change travel behaviour focussing on clean, active and healthy modes of transport The 5 objectives relate to fields of intervention in which the SCALE-UP urban areas excel and deliver valuable output by implementing 28 mobility measures scaled to the FUA and taking into account the TEN-T dimension. Furthermore a strong framework for thematic policy validation amongst SCALE-UP experts guarantees a meaningful cooperation between the 3 urban areas, internal capacity building and mutual exchange and learning. A 6th strategic objective (TAKE UP) defines how the project delivers evidence of the effectiveness of the different actions in relation to EU climate and transport targets, and how it accelerates the take-up of these solutions amongst and beyond SCALE-UP urban areas. The evaluation framework with proven EU record, provides evidence of the impact. Moreover the data driven approach pays special attention to how new digital mobility solutions yield new datasets. These offer new insights and feed the evaluation framework resulting in a more evidence- based policy development.