NCEO's NPG activity delivers expert scientific, technical and operational advice on EO-related policies and services to government departments and agencies. NCEO works particularly with the UK Space Agency and Defra, with a growing liaison with BEIS Climate Team. Advice covers scientific and technical insight; appraisal and review, reports; organisation of technical working groups and science surveys; and inputs to statements. Our expected activities are to provide: 1. Advice by the NCEO Director and senior staff to the UK Space Agency regarding UK Space Policy, including the subscriptions to European Space Agency programmes, Industrial Strategy and spectrum usage. 2. Advice to the Defra group, including Chief Scientific Advisor's Innovation programme regarding the application of space-based Earth Observation to environmental policy and services, including advice on the EU Copernicus programme, the Defra EO Centre of Excellence and the emerging UK Government Earth Observation Service. 3. Ad hoc advice to other government departments and agencies regarding the suitability of EO for particular applications and ways of overcoming particular challenges (e.g. supply of analysis ready data, utility of data cubes), for example to the BEIS Climate Team. 4. Coordination of advice to UK government (Defra, UK Space Agency) and technical expert activities related to the international Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), including high level briefings. The aim is that UK organisations can contribute to and benefit strongly from developments in the international community, a current government priority. Societal and public benefit are important drivers for these global engagements.

EPIC proposes a Programme Support Activity which will produce a clear integrated roadmap & masterplan for its implementation through a Strategic Research Cluster (SRC) on In-space Electrical Propulsion & Station-Keeping. EPIC plans to do a survey of the current worldwide Electric Propulsion (& related) technologies & their TRL. A collection of requirements from all stakeholders will be done, also assessing potential future missions. Both tasks will build on the 2014 EP Harmonisation & the consultation will be expanded to all EU actors. This will allow to focus efforts on the SRC roadmap’ specific goals. Based on this work, a critical gap analysis of technologies & needs will be done, to create the basis for selection of candidate SRC developments, oriented to satisfy short-term (incremental advances) & medium/long term (disruptive) needs. Then the prioritisation will be the driver & challenge, leading to the selection of activities for an SRC roadmap & masterplan for its implementation, aiming at a validation flight in 2023 & to contribute to European leadership in EP technologies. EPIC will provide a solid & widely consulted advice to the EC on the call texts for operational grants & continuous support to EC/REA to maximise the SRC success. EPIC will analyse the SRC progress, evaluate its risks & put a mitigation plan in place, including the Collaboration Agreement. The EPIC consortium will disseminate its progress & results, & intends to contribute to the SRC results’ dissemination not only with an exploitation plan but also by exercising a close coordination with all operational grants. EPIC is coordinated by ESA & complemented by renowned National Agencies: ASI, BELSPO, CDTI, CNES, DLR & UKSA, & by the major European space industrial associations, Eurospace & SME4Space. This teaming of beneficiaries brings together the multidisciplinary mix of expertise required to deliver an unbiased, rational strategic roadmap & masterplan for EP developments in H2020.

This ERA-NET Co-fund will bring together a number of national and transnational organisations with an interest in promoting the greater use of bioenergy. It follows on from two previous BESTF ERA-NET Plus initiatives launched in 2013 and, like its predecessors, aims to kick-start large scale investment in close-to-market implementation of bioenergy, thereby helping to achieve the key objectives of the European Industrial Bioenergy Initiative (EIBI) Implementation Plan and the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan. The EIBI aims to boost the contribution of sustainable bioenergy to the 2020 climate and energy objectives. This proposal addresses the need for integrated action across Europe to promote the development of bioenergy demonstrators across a number of technologies by coordinating research and development projects and providing a financial mechanism to support projects that are close to commercialisation. The overall aim for this third BESTF ERA-NET is to implement a joint programme for bioenergy demonstration projects to demonstrate enhanced bioenergy technologies that will help Europe progress towards achieving its 2016 and 2020 targets. It will leverage public-private partnerships to manage the risks and share the financing of close to market bioenergy projects. The key objectives of BESTF3 are: 1.To implement a single collaborative funding call that will support projects focused on the generation of bioenergy. 2.To maintain and enhance coherence and networking between national bioenergy programmes across the EU. 3.To further the demonstration of enhanced bioenergy technologies in order to help develop robust project plans for a range of demonstrator and flagship plants, that will help Europe to make progress towards achieving its 2016 and 2020 energy targets. 4.To disseminate knowledge gained from the programme and individual projects across the EU.

The NCEO NC-ODA programme is focussed on a series of generic science issues that are particularly relevant to development challenges: characterisation and forecasting of land surface state including vegetation change and soil moisture; the evolution of forest carbon and characterisation of carbon fluxes arising from deforestation and degradation; the dynamic nature of fires, their emissions into the atmosphere and the development of large-scale air pollution; the development of a cadre of researchers and applications specialists trained in state-of-the-art Earth Observation (EO). We will address specific problems faced by DAC countries: the vulnerability of crop yields in semi-arid regions in Africa to drought, the challenge of protecting and enhancing Kenya's forest resources to mitigate climate change, the forecast skill necessary to capture hazardous air quality in South-East Asia stemming from open biomass burning, and the current lack of capacity of many African nations to make effective use of satellite EO data. The programme is structured into four WPs. Relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals are: 2 (Zero hunger), 3 (Good health and well-being), 13 (Climate action), 15 (Life on Land), and 17 (Partnership for the goals). WP 1 will improve crop yield modelling in Ghana and potentially Ethiopia through data assimilation of multiple EO data streams, for example effective leaf area index and soil moisture. The research will yield new knowledge on the value of accurate EO data parameters in a data-model system, to better characterise crop change and increase predictive skill, to examine upscaling from landscape to country scale, and improve soil moisture forecast skill [SGDs 2, 15]. WP 2 will establish a baseline of carbon emissions from deforestation in Kenya, identify different types of deforestation and degradation from synthetic aperture radar, optical and laser ranging (LiDAR) data, and establish areas that are suitable for afforestation to support the Vision 2030 of the Kenyan Government that aims to increase forest cover from 6 to 10 per cent by 2030. The work will establish forest reference emission levels and above-ground carbon stocks. This research is key to understanding carbon cycling estimates in a REDD+ policy context. [SGDs 13, 15]. WP 3 will develop and demonstrate new data sources that can improve forecast accuracy for large-scale air pollution during fire events. Currently, forecast models use estimates of fires that fail to capture the magnitude and variability of dynamic large forest and peatland fires and fires due to agricultural residue burning. The research will improve pollutant emissions estimates from fires, EO-based retrievals of smoke plume aerosols and auto-identification of biomass-burning plumes. We will work with stakeholders in the ASEAN countries to co-develop and demonstrate new systems, characterise improvements and train staff in the interpretation of complex EO data [SDGs 3, 13]. WP 4 will build capacity through international EO-related initiatives, including the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) AfriGEOSS initiative and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) Working Group on Capacity Building & Data Democracy, to improve access to and use of contemporary EO datasets in African nations and other DAC nations. Work will include scoping of UK-related EO projects and experts related to AfriGEOSS identified needs, extension of the training of WP1-3 to wider DAC countries and to strategic capacity building, co-ordinated work with the relevant GEO initiatives of GFOI and GEOGLAM, and support of access to EO data for DAC countries. These actions will also benefit UK national priorities such as the monitoring of projects supported by the GNU partnership (Germany, Norway and UK), which is making US$5 billion available between 2015 and 2020 for REDD+ early movers, and the Biocarbon Fund's Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL) [SDG 17].