SMILE CITY provides realistic circular systemic solutions to support the evolution towards a carbon-neutral, environmentally sustainable, toxic-free, circular economy by 2050. The contribution to C02 reduction works on two levels: - an intensive use of recycled materials in replacement of virgin ones, without decreasing the performance of final products; - the use of such products and applications to increase sustainable mobility. The project aims to integrate innovative systemic solutions in up to 100 km of cycling paths and implement 20 e-bike charging stations, developed using different types of recycled urban waste: construction materials, EoL tyres and EoL batteries from Electric Vehicles. The foreseen innovations include the creation of e-bike charging stations made of recycled concrete precast elements and PV panels equally produced with recycled materials, the installation of recycled rubber moulded products for urban furniture such as rubber bollard, lane dividers, and rubberized asphalt, which contributes both to increase sustainability and safety. SMILE CITY will thus assemble the technological state of the art of the different value chains involved to implement circular systemic solutions in 7 different EU and non-EU countries, backing the transition towards a regenerative, inclusive and circular economy at local and regional scale across Europe and therefore boosting interregional and cross-border cooperation. In addition, the project will also increase resource efficiency, reinforcing Europe’s strategic autonomy and reduce the negative environmental footprint related to current recycling techniques of the considered urban waste value chains. By supporting awareness raising and information spreading, SMILE CITY will engage both citizens and industrial leaders in the green transition towards climate-neutral solutions for Circular Cities, bolstering the market uptake of circular solutions through regional and local actions. Two partners are CCRI members.

GEOFIT is an integrated industrially driven action aimed at deployment of cost effective enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) on energy efficient building retrofitting. This entails the development technical development of innovative EGS and its components, namely, non-standard heat exchanger configurations, a novel hybrid heat pump and electrically driven compression heat pump systems and suite of heating and cooling components to be integrated with the novel GSHP concepts, all specially designed to applied in energy efficient retrofitting projects. To make viable the novel EGS in energy efficient building retrofitting, a suite of tools and technologies is developed, including: low invasive risk assessment technologies, site-inspection and worksite building monitoring techniques (SHM), control systems for cost-effective and optimized EGS in operation phase and novel BIM-enabled dedicated tools for management of geothermal based retrofitting works (GEOBIM platform). Furthermore, the project is commited with the application of novel drilling techniques as the improved low invasive vertical drilling and trenchless technologies. GEOFIT brings these technical developments within a new management framework based on Integrated Design and Delivery Solutions for the geothermal based retrofitting process.The IDDS driven process will materialise in the Geo-BIM enabled Retrofitting Management Platform (Geo-BIM tool). By using the 5 demonstration sites as open case studies in 4 countries and climates, featuring different representative technical scenarios/business models, GEOFIT will leverage its key exploitable results, adapted business models and market oriented dissemination for maximizing impact and wide adoption of these novel geothermal technologies and approaches.

Addressing call topic area 3 (DR Technologies), DRIvE links together cutting edge science in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), forecasting and cyber security with emerging innovative SMEs making first market penetration in EU DR markets. In doing so, near market solutions are strengthened with lower TRL, higher risk functionalities that support a vision of an “internet of energy” and “collaborative energy network.” From the research side, MAS will move closer to real time operations and progress from a limited number of assets toward decentralized management of a larger number of assets providing DR services to prosumers, grid stakeholders and DSOs. The research will deliver a fully-integrated, interoperable and secure DR Management Platform for Aggregators with advanced hybrid forecasting, optimization, fast-response capabilities and enhanced user participation components in a standard-compliant (Open ADR) market-regulated (USEF) manner, empowering a true cost-effective mass-market (100's millions of heterogenous assets). The project features 5 pilots across 3 countries consisting of a stadium, wind farm, 7-floor office, tertiary & residential buildings within medium-large districts, resulting in over 25 MW of potential flexible capacity. Direct engagement of 100 households and 2 tertiary buildings (over 1,000 persons) is attained and replication to over 75,000 persons is possible. The pilots will be running in real DSO environment with real engagement of grid players. Overall, DRIvE will make available average 20% of load in residential and tertiary buildings for use in DR, resulting in up to 30% cost-saving (price-based DR) and also maximizing revenue for prosumers (incentive-based DR). DRIvE will also allow a minimum 25% increase of renewable hosting capacity (distribution grid) and up to 30% of overall reduction of CAPEX and OPEX costs for DSOs. The project is female led and three women serve in management structure positions of responsibility.

HYBUILD will develop two innovative hybrid storage concepts: one for the Mediterranean climate primarily meant for cooling energy provision, and one for the Continental climate primarily meant for heating and DHW production. HYBUILD action is a systematic approach for developing operationally integrated thermal and electric components and systems from TRL4 to TRL6 and beyond. The hybrid storage concepts are based on: a compact sorption storage, based on a patented way to integrate an innovative adsorbent material within an efficient high surface heat exchanger, a high density latent storage, based on a high performance aluminum micro-channel heat exchanger with additional PCM layers, and an efficient electric storage. The balancing of thermal and electrical energy flows will be realized by seamless integration of electric building components in a DC coupled system and by efficient conversion and upgrading of electric surplus and renewable thermal energy sources by compression and adsorption heat pumps. The components will be integrated to realize the full-scale hybrid storages (with overall volume between 1 and 2 m3), which will be properly managed by advanced control and building energy management systems (BEMS), able to optimize the interactions between components and district network. Such a configuration will allow reaching energy savings ranging between 20 and 40%, on yearly basis, both in Mediterranean and Continental climate for non-connected and district-connected buildings. HYBUILD hybrid storages will be used to upgrade existing building configurations and monitored in three different demo sites in near-life operation, both for non-connected and district-connected buildings in different climates.