The aim of SUNRISE is to make sustainable fuels and commodity chemicals at affordable costs of materials and Earth surface, using sunlight as the only energy source. This includes nitrogen fixation and the conversion of atmospheric CO2 into products, which will be a game changer in the fight against climate change. The CSA SUNRISE gathers the scientific and industrial communities that will develop radically new technologies to harvest solar energy and enable the foundation of a global circular economy. SUNRISE targets three synergistic S&T approaches: (i) electrochemical conversion with renewable power, direct conversion via (ii) photoelectrochemical and (iii) biological and biohybrid systems. These will be implemented with the crucial support of novel material design via high performance computing, advanced biomimicry, and synthetic biology. Ultimately, the novel solar-to-chemical technologies will be integrated into the global industrial system. In 10 years, SUNRISE will bring renewable fuel production to TRL 9 at a cost of 0.4 €/L and atmospheric CO2 photoconversion at TRL 7. The ambition is to convert up to 2500 tons of CO2 and produce > 100 tons of commodity chemicals (per ha per year), realizing a 300% energy gain over present best practices and deploying devices on the 1000 ha scale. This requires new solutions for absorbing >90% of light and storing >80% of the photogenerated electrons in fuels/chemicals produced in large-scale solar energy converters, in close interaction with social and environmental sciences to optimize their deployment. SUNRISE will make Europe the leading hub of disruptive technologies, closing the carbon cycle and providing a solar dimension to the chemical industry, with enormous economical, societal and environmental benefits. SUNRISE is an intrinsically flagship enterprise that has obtained explicit commitment from top organisations, both from industry and academia across Europe, to set the stage for the next steps of the action.

SYNERGIES PILLAR: SMARTSPEND is going to put booster rockets under the SET Plan. It will bring all the non-nuclear energy sectors together for a focused discussion on their common interests around technology development and non-technology barriers to the uptake of their technologies. The partners will then talk in parallel to all Implementation Working Groups to ensure that synergies between the ideas, plans and ambitions of each sector are exploited. This will happen at the start, middle and end of the project. FINANCIAL STRATEGIES PILLAR: SMARTSPEND will also get energy sectors to sit together and discuss their common needs for financing, and compare the way in which each federates its European energy R&I interest and presents it to the Commission. The messages from discussions under both Pillars will be brought to the attention of high-level government officials (ideally ministers) individually through a concerted campaign in SET Plan country capitals. This is SMARTSPEND’s ‘Roadshow’, in which delegations of 5 relevant company bosses are created, briefed, and sent to the minister to tell their story and share their views. In addition, the project will ensure all are better aware of the EU’s soft loan scheme for energy innovation, EDP Innovfin, and of ETS Innovation Fund. Both can complement national or European grants. SMARTSPEND will organise a conference, “Access to Risk Finance” for energy technology developers and the managers of public and private financing or funding schemes. Knowledge of the schemes’ opportunities will be spread widely. The SMARTSPEND consortium has the ideal make-up to reach deep into the community of stakeholders behind each SET Plan energy technology. Leading organisations behind the few technologies not represented in the consortium have sent letters of support to the proposal indicating they will use other funding to join SMARTSPEND’s activities and comment on early versions of its reports.

Batteries are one key technology enabling a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. A pan-European research and innovation action is necessary to tackle the challenges preventing batteries to reach ultrahigh performance and to rapidly find new sustainable battery materials. The BATTERY 2030+ large-scale research initiative aims to invent the batteries of the future by providing breakthrough technologies to the European battery industry throughout the value chain and enable long-term European leadership in both existing markets (road transport, stationary energy storage), and future emerging applications (robotics, aerospace, medical devices, internet of things). This application for a Coordination and Support Action, with the acronym BATTERY 2030PLUS, will lead to the continued development of the BATTERY 2030+ large-scale research initiative. It kick-starts a European long-term research initiative on batteries. The main objectives are to develop the BATTERY 2030+ R&I roadmap and facilitate its implementation by coordinating and monitoring the consortia winning the calls LC-BAT-12, 13, 14 -2020. In addition, this consortium will in collaboration with the LC-BAT projects, propose guidelines for data sharing, standardization of protocols, and modelling methods/tools. The consortium will also prepare a common strategy for the protection and commercial exploitation of the results, as well as building competence by new European curricula and facilitate the communication, dialogue, and cooperation on cross-cutting topics. Together with the ETIP Batteries Europe the consortium will develop the SET-Plan for batteries and establish links to national and international battery stakeholder networks. The consortium gathers 20 leading European universities and research institutes (UU, Aalto, AIT, CEA, CIC Energigune, CIDETEC, CNRS/CDF, DTU, EMPA, ENEA, FRAUNHOFER, FZJ, KIT, WWU/MEET, NIC, POLITO, SINTEF, TU Delft, VUB, and WTU) and three industry-led associations (EASE, EMIRI, and Recharge).

With this proposal, a qualified and assorted representative group of the European Materials community, intend to propose an activity for further boosting and reinforcing a concept launched by Alliance for Materials (A4M): the creation of a strong, sustainable, inclusive network where any European Materials players (from Industry, Research, University) could feel comfortable and can gain real value for her/his own interest and expectations as far as Materials R&D&I is concerned. This partnership promotes the integration of concerted and strategic challenges of national, regional and European needs in the field. The MATCH proposal is focused in 4 main targets, crucial for the promotion of European sustainable development and innovation actions, as anticipated by future challenges to: • the enlargement and effective improvement within the existing Materials network at EU level; • the multidisciplinary connection of Materials to a large number of fields relevant for European growth and where concerted management actions are needed; • the integration with existing and/or promotion of new Materials networks at National and Inter/Regional levels; • the integration of EU and national and regional networks in a sustainable (long-lasting) effectively aligned network hubs. MATCH foresees the establishment of comprehensive networks focusing on complementary stakeholder areas to enable promotion of connections between the scientific creativity represented by academia and the enterprises to focus on market needs. As a result of the MATCH project any organisation interested in materials research in Europe will have a single reference network through which to obtain information, contacts and guidance in an efficient and transparent way. Established and well-connected material research stakeholders will be able to intensify their activities and extend their collaborative activities at European level, realising the A4M concept for the ”The Materials Common House".

The IRISS project aims to connect, synergize and transform the SSbD community in Europe and globally towards a life cycle thinking where there is a holistic integration of safety, climate neutrality, circularity and functionality of materials, products and processes throughout their lifecycle to meet the EU Green Deal, EU Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, and UN SDGs. The uniqueness of IRISS is that the consortium is built of core and network partners that represent the top components needed to build an EU-led permanent network (i.e. policy, industry, applied science, innovation and research & education), and that is self-sustaining and international in scope. IRISS responds to the work programme with the following objectives: 1. To develop a state-of-the-art SSbD ecosystem that is supportive for the uptake and utilization of safe-by-design (SbD) and sustainable-by-design (SusbD) strategies by industry, especially SMEs. 2. To contribute to criteria and guiding principles for SusbD development driven by the application of life cycle thinking in materials and product design and in line with ongoing work in European and international initiatives. 3. To establish a structure for a permanent, gender balanced, inclusive, international and sustainable experts? network accessible for all relevant stakeholders. 4. To develop SSbD roadmaps encompassing 3 agendas identifying: 1) scientific research needs, 2) skills, competences and education needs, and 3) knowledge and information sharing needs. The roadmaps will be developed in a co-creation and inclusive process for the implementation of SSbD in industry and society including prioritised steps within research, innovation, skill demands, management and governance. 5. To develop a monitoring and evaluation programme that systematically scans for state-of-the-art knowledge, information gaps and translates these into specific R&D questions and governance needs that feed into systematic roadmap updates.