The project SOLUTIONSplus aims to set up a global platform for shared, public and commercial e-mobility solutions, and to kick start the transition towards low-carbon urban mobility. The project work-plan encompasses city level demonstrations to test different types of innovative and integrated e-mobility solutions, vehicle and user-level demonstrations complemented by scaling up and replication activities. To appropriately address the call topic LC-GV-05-2019 and maximise its impact, SOLUTIONSplus brings together highly committed cities, industry, research, implementing organisations and finance partners. Through numerous synergistic projects, networks and a strong technical experience, the SOLUTIONSplus consortium will be able to deliver a highly ambitious project. Direct co-funding contributions will be provided by partner cities and SOLUTIONSplus works closely with UN Environment and the International Energy Agency (IEA) on a joint global urban e-mobility programme that will significantly boost replication and impact of this Innovation Action. Through the regional platforms, a global programme and local teams, the project aims to develop highly effective and innovative approaches to urban e-mobility ensuring that mobility systems and interventions from this project deliver on the Paris Agreement, meet the Sustainable Development Goals and address the New Urban Agenda. The Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UEMI, launched by UN-Habitat) is the project coordinator, collaborating closely with the MobiliseYourCity and Decarbonising Transport partnerships. The consortium has developed a collaboration with a partner programme led by the IEA and UNEP funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which will turn the overall partnership into the leading global platform on urban electric mobility.

SESA will facilitate a structured co-development process, which starts with the co-development of energy access innovations that have a high potential for take-up and are tested, validated and later replicated. Each technology will be demonstrated in the living lab, and a corresponding information and training package is created. Each of the living lab team will consist of technology experts, local implementation partners (members of the consortium) along with local authorities (associated partners) and innovators (recruited through the seed-funding call), guided by business development, finance and policy experts. Demonstration actions will aim to test innovative technologies and services in different contexts that have a high level of replicability and a high potential for long-term sustainability. The project aims to achieve a high level of replicability of actions. As part of an effort to go beyond the state of the art and maximise the project?s impact, the project will co-develop innovations with local partners and cooperate closely with sister projects to exploit synergies. Solutions that will be tested in this project have been selected on their basis of their replication potential. Demonstration concepts aim to integrate several solutions to provide essential energy services to rural and urban communities and create easily replicable business opportunities for local entrepreneurs. The co-developed demonstration actions will be initially tested in the Kenya living lab and based on the initial learnings, various aspects of the tested innovations will be validated in living labs in different socio-economic operating environments (Ghana, South Africa, Malawi and Morocco). The learning from the validation living labs will strengthen the applicability and replicability of the technologies as well as the basic business concepts, which will be shared in the SESA toolbox and incubator programme.

The STREnGth_M consortium will contribute significantly to the planning of research and innovation in Europe by identifying future research needs in the field of road transport, by updating and supporting the coordination of strategic research agendas and roadmaps in the field and by facilitating continuous exchange between road transport research related Horizon Europe partnerships and platforms. It will further analyse research, innovation and cooperation capacities in Member States, explore funding instruments on national and regional level and assess potentials of national and regional roadmaps. Within STREnGth_M the global progress of electric mobility will be tracked while measuring the feasibility of innovative solutions for prospective and emerging markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This will contribute to strengthen exisiting and even forge new links between European, national and regional programmes and support structures for international cooperation task forces. The partners will also identify barriers that may exist for the deployment of research results on European and on international level and they will identify education and training actions to contribute to capacity building. In order to inform and engage the vast stakeholder community, policy makers, the civil society and more, the consortium will develop elaborate dissemination strategies, support the dissemination and organisation of European and international road transport research related events. This way the dissemination of the contribution from road transport to the realization of the European Green Deal targets and the Paris Agreement can be ensured. Via the establishment of the so called Multiplier Group the engagement of the various stakeholders will be facilitated throughout the project.

The main objective of EMPOWER is to substantially reduce the use of conventionally fueled vehicles (CFV) in cities by influencing the mobility behaviour of CFV drivers and users towards fundamental change. To achieve this objective EMPOWER will create a set of tools for industry, policy makers and employers. These will empower them beyond the lifespan of this project to understand, help choose and successfully implement ‘positive’ evidence-based and cost-effective policy interventions, based on new and innovative mobility services, and in the context of already existing infrastructure, policy and measures. EMPOWER will reduce the use of CFV by: shifting trips to other modes/other vehicle types, promoting sharing and self-organisation and reducing demand overall e.g. through remote access to services. Undesirable impacts from CFV use will be reduced by: shifting CFV use to outside peak times and diversions to avoid particular areas/routes. The research will be multidisciplinary and involve: social science research with the public, 4 living lab experiments and 7 City demonstrators which will be chosen through an open 'bidding' process. The EMPOWER concept will be used in practice by: City stakeholders being able (through a software tool) to choose positive policy options based on their expected impacts and deliver incentives and social network sharing schemes to individuals using software. The innovation outputs of EMPOWER include an EMPOWER Toolkit to support industry, policy makers and employers to understand, choose and implement positive policy interventions. The Toolkit includes: new mobility services to provide innovative positive policy measures, new evidence on behavioural responses and impacts from positive incentives, improved organisational models for successful implementation of positive policy measures and innovation in the evaluation methodology for new mobility services. We expect at least 1 million persons to be impacted by EMPOWER.