TERRE aims to develop novel geo-technologies to address the competitiveness challenge of the European construction industry in a low carbon agenda. It will be delivered through an inter-sectoral and intra-European coordinated PhD programme focused on carbon-efficient design of geotechnical infrastructure. Industry and Research in the construction sector have been investing significantly in recent years to produce innovative low-carbon technologies. However, little innovation has been created in the geo-infrastructure industry, which is lagging behind other construction industry sectors. TERRE aims to close this gap through a network-wide training programme carried out by a close collaboration of eleven Universities and Research Centres and three SMEs. It is structured to provide a balanced combination of fundamental and applied research and will eventually develop operational tools such as software for low-carbon geotechnical design and a Decision Support System for infrastructure project appraisal. The research fellows will be involved in inter-sectoral and intra-European projects via enrolment in 8 ‘Joint-Awards’ and 7 ‘Industrial’ PhDs. The research fellows will be trained in low-carbon design by developing novel design concepts including eco-reinforced geomaterials, ‘engineered’ vegetation, engineered soil-atmosphere interfaces, biofilms, shallow geothermal energy and soil carbon sequestration. Distinctive features of TERRE are the supervision by an inter-sectoral team and the orientation of the research towards technological applications. Training at the Network level includes the development of entrepreneurial skills via a special programme on ‘Pathways to Research Enterprise’ to support the research fellows in establishing and leading spin-out companies after the end of the project.

Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) is currently an expansive market. Market analysts estimate a compound annual growth rate of 18,7% and a total of 5,4 GW installed worldwide between 2013 and 2019. One of the main drivers for BIPV market growth in the EU is the increasingly demanding legislation related to energy performance in buildings. The large potential for energy savings in buildings led the EU Commission to adopt the 2010/31/EU Directive on the energy performance of buildings with the objective that all new buildings are Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) by 2020. Renewable energy technologies, and in particular the integration of photovoltaic systems in the building environment offer many possibilities to play a key role within the NZEB scenario. Despite this favorable framework for BIPV technology market uptake, initial estimations of BIPV market growth have been subsequently overestimated in the past few years. A series of demands from the stakeholders which have not been properly addressed by the BIPV value chain are the cause for this deviation. These key requirements are mainly related to the flexibility in design and aesthetics considerations, lack of tools integrating PV and building performance, demonstration of long-term reliability of the technology, compliance with legal regulations, smart interaction with the grid and cost effectiveness. Within this context: The objective of PVSITES project is to drive BIPV technology to a large market deployment by demonstrating an ambitious portfolio of building-integrated solar technologies and systems, giving a forceful, reliable answer to the market requirements identified by the industrial members of the consortium in their day-to-day activity. High impact demonstration and dissemination actions will be accomplished in terms of cost-effective renewable generation, reduction of energy demands and smart energy management.

STAR*track aims at expanding the Built4People Innovation Cluster (B4PIC) network developed in the HE project NEBULA and strengthening and supporting B4PICs and their members to deliver sustainable and people-centric innovation and accelerate uptake by regional value and supply chains. This overarching objective will be achieved by: - Integrating new B4PICS: 6 new B4PICs will be set-up in regions so far not covered by the B4PIC network and receive direct support. Outreach activities to innovation clusters will be made in order to reach the B4P contractual target of 10-15 fully mature B4PICs by 2028. - Creating enabling conditions and providing tools and training for B4PICs and their members for increased development and market transfer of sustainable construction and renovation innovation. - Accelerating the demonstration of holistic and inclusive solutions with high market potential through tailored support mechanisms (incl. access to demo sites) - Facilitating access to funding for demonstration, scale-up and implementation of sustainable innovation by local/regional construction value chains - Paving the way for replication, wide-spread use of the supporting tools and services, and continuous expansion of the Built4People network based on a UE27 replication plan with a long-term vision and business model. In order to make B4PICs attractive for different target groups of the innovation value chain, concrete value propositions will be defined to highlight the impact of B4PIC with respect to improvement of innovation capacities and development of sustainable business opportunities. The impact of the B4PIC network and the B4PICs themselves will be measured to show their significance for the green, digital, and people-centric transition of the Built Environment sector, the up-skilling of innovation actors, and the acceleration of construction and renovation products and solutions towards climate neutrality, in line with the impacts laid out in the Work Programme.

OptEEmAL aims to develop an Optimised Energy Efficient Design Platform for refurbishment at district level, which will deliver an optimised, integrated and systemic design based on an Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) approach for building and district retrofitting projects, reducing time delivery and uncertainties, resulting in improved solutions when compared to business-as-usual practices. This main objective will be deployed through the following key objectives: 1. Development of a holistic and effective services platform for District Energy Efficient Retrofitting Design integrating interoperable modules and tools able to provide services for diagnosis, scenarios generation (according to stakeholders priorities), energy/ cost/ environment/ social evaluation, scenarios optimisation and data export. 2. Reinforcement of the presence of all involved stakeholders through an Integrated Project Delivery approach that will allow them being articulated through a collaborative and value-based process to deliver high-quality outcomes. 3. Development of an integrated ontology-based District Data Model that will contain key information in the fields of energy, comfort, environment (LCA), economic, social wellbeing and urban morphology. 4. Development of an Energy Conservation Measures catalogue (ECM) including technical, operational, maintenance and cost information giving valuable and consistent outputs to the design and district operation and maintenance stages. 5. Development of a bio-inspired optimization module based on Evolutionary computing with the aim to automate the decision making process to obtain the optimal design for an energy efficient retrofitting plan at district level. 6. Development of external connections of the OptEEmAL Platform to external entities (i.e. existing tools enabling the calculation of indicators to generate and optimise the retrofitting scenarios) 7. Strong disseminations, training, exploitation and market deployment strategies.

Around 461 million ton/year of C&DW are generated in EU28. Recent studies on the characterization of C&DW samples at European level revealed a predominant fraction of concrete (52% average). Over the last years, novel technology has been developed aiming to guarantee high quality recycled concrete aggregates for use in new concrete, thereby closing the concrete loop. The most advanced concrete recycling technologies currently produce coarse (>4mm) recycled concrete aggregates by removing cement paste from the surface of the aggregates. However, the fine (0-4 mm) fraction, ca. 40% of the concrete waste, still faces technical barriers to be incorporated into new concrete and consequently, is often down-cycled. At the other extreme, there are minor (e.g. glass) and emerging (e.g. mineral wool) C&DW materials, currently accounting for 0.7% of the total, but revealing growing rates as consequence of European regulations. Those emerging C&DW streams have not yet found technological and business solutions, being mostly landfilled. On the other hand, concrete is the most widely used material in building, with a growing trend towards prefabrication. The European precast concrete sector faces diverse needs for resource efficiency improvement (reduction in natural resource consumption and metabolization of waste materials, reduction in carbon footprint and embodied energy, design for reuse, increase in process efficiency and waste minimization, lighter solutions, enhanced thermal performance through novel cost-effective insulating materials). Aiming at facing these challenges, VEEP main objective is to eco-design, develop and demonstrate new cost-effective technological solutions that will lead to novel closed-loop circular approaches for C&DW recycling into novel multilayer precast concrete elements (for both new buildings and refurbishment) incorporating new concretes as well as superinsulation material produced by using at least 75% (by weight) of C&DW recycled materials.