The E3Canarias project aims at enhancing the innovation management capacity of the Canary Islands’ SMEs through the delivery of 7-day service packages, targeted to the most innovative small and medium size companies in the islands, as well as giving support to the Canarian beneficiaries of the HORIZON 2020 dedicated SME instrument, as Key Account Manager (KAM). Given the restricted number of packages available for the Canary Islands’ potential, the SMEs that have already been active in different innovation and internationalization activities will be assessed by using a standard innovation intake checklist and the SMEs with the most significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalization will be selected. For the delivery of these services: • A minimum number of 2 EEN staff members will be trained for innovation management via the IMP3rove-Academy. • A minimum number of 7 service packages enhancing the innovation management capacities of SMEs will be provided. The final number of SMEs beneficiaries of the service could be increased depending on the resources available. • Considering the figures of participation of SMEs from the Canary Islands in the European Seven Framework Programme of RTD (FP7), a maximum of one beneficiary of the HORIZON 2020 dedicated SME instrument in 2014 is foreseen, so the expected provision of KAM service will be one. If the final number of SMEs is higher they will be supported as well.

The GHaNA project aims to explore and characterize a new marine bioresource, for blue biotechnology applications in aquaculture, cosmetics and possibly food and health industry. The project will determine the biological and chemical diversity of Haslea diatoms to develop mass-scale production for viable industrial applications by maximising biomass production and associated high-value compound production, including terpenoids, marennine-like pigments, lipids and silica skeletons. The genus Haslea species type H. ostrearia, produces marennine, a water-soluble blue pigment used for greening oysters in Western France, which is also a bioactive molecule. Haslea diatoms have thus a high potential for use in (1) existing oyster farming, (2) production of pigments and bioactive compounds with natural antibacterial properties, (3) application as a colouring agent within industry, and (4) use of silica skeletons as inorganic “biocharges” in the formulation of new elastomeric materials. This will be achieved through fundamental and applied-oriented research to isolate fast- growing strains of Haslea, optimising their growth environment to increase marennine and other high-value compound productivity; to develop blue biotechnology specifically applied to benthic microalgae (biorefinery approach, processes); and to develop industrial exploitation of colouring and bioactive compounds through commercial activities of aquaculture, food, cosmetics and health.

The amount of freshwater available has drastically decreased due to rapid population growth, industrialization, and recurring dry extremes. Merely 3% of freshwater makes up all of Earth's water resources, with saline water making up the other 97%. One-fifth of the world's population, according to the World Health Organization, resides in nations where freshwater is scarce. For this reason, desalination of seawateror brackish water is one of the essential solutions to the worldwide problem of water scarcity. However, the main barriers to the general adoption of desalination systems are the substantial upfront technology costs, and the large amount of energy that is needed for the technological processes. The major goal of AQUASOL is to develop a technological platform that enables the massive penetration of renewable energy sources into the desalination technology with no impact on the power network and providing disruptive, energy-efficient solutions for saline/brackish water pre-treatment and filtration, as well as brine and wastewater recycling. The system will be supplied with hybrid energy storage system and connected to the modular fault-tolerant multiport converter. This approach will help not only to reduce number of power electronics converters, provide both long-term and short-term energy storage capabilities, stabilize the system against intermittent renewable energy inputs but also support grid-independent operation in remote or island scenarios. A combination of novel two-dimensional material-based membranes and specific chemicals for seawater and wastewater treatment will be developed. To maintain minimum energy consumption during operation, the model-based energy management system will be developed, too. This closed-loop approach minimizes waste and maximizes resource utilization for irrigation in agriculture. The concept will address and investigate societal challenges of technology adoption and measures to overcome identified challeges

Solar photovoltaic (PV) has become the world’s fastest-growing energy technology, with an annual global market surpassing for the first time in 2018 the 100 Gigawatt (GW) level and cumulative capacity of 583.5 GW in 2019. However, in order to produce large amounts of energy and to avoid increased energy transmission costs, solar power plants must be located close to the demand centres. Yet, it is a problem to require vast surfaces of land near densely populated areas where the power is consumed. This is specially a problem in Europe, which by far has the smallest average size of a solar PV plant in the world. Floating PV (FPV) plants have opened up new opportunities for facing these land restrictions. Nevertheless, this market is currently concentrated in reservoirs and lakes. Offshore and near-shore FPV systems are still in a nascent stage due to additional challenges faced by non-sheltered sea conditions: waves and winds are stronger, implying that mooring, anchoring and dynamic load capacity becomes even more critical due to the increased frequency of high wave- and wind-loads. The BOOST will address these challenges with a new FPV system partly inspired by the floating and mooring technology that has been used over 20 years in rough Norwegian waters by the fish farming industry, combined with a disruptive and patented floating hydro-elastic membrane (<1mm thickness). The hydro-elastic membrane is attached to an outer perimeter of buoyant tubing so that the floater is not dragged under by the mooring, even in strong currents, winds and waves, similar to the effect of oil on troubled water. The validation of this technology in non-sheltered sea waters lead consortium expects to reach an installed capacity of 1,750 MW for the 5 years (6.2% of the SAM), contributing to avoid CO2 emission of 4,120 kt (but each PV plant will last for at least 25 years, so the long-term impact is 5 times larger). It will generate to the consortium accumulated profits above €94m.