Humanity is approaching a cornerstone where Climate Change will transform society, industry and economy. Therefore, moving away from inefficient energy consumption and fossil fuels is more urgent than ever. Renewable energy sources are growing fast but their full integration will make necessary not just a boost of their efficiency but rather a quantum leap in energy management. Such paradigm change will come from technologies adaptable to changing climate conditions and, importantly, making use of widely available non-critical materials. ADAPTATION vision is to challenge current paradigms in solar energy harvesting and their integration by developing a new solar material platform that will integrate thermal management and energy collection in a single material, reducing electricity peak profile and allowing easy adaptation of the energy harvesting properties to different climate conditions. For this purpose, we will take inspiration from the two most efficient energy management processes on Earth: photosynthesis and terrestrial radiative cooling. ADAPTATION will mimic simultaneously the strategies followed by plants during photosynthesis to collect and manage energy at the nanoscale and the power-free radiative cooling of Earth by thermal regulation at the microscale. These extraordinary energy collection and managing strategies are robust to disorder and provide self-regulatory cooling capacities which make them ideal to be integrated into a wide spectrum of physical objects, powering them with a sustainable energy source. In ADAPTATION we will develop the building blocks for this technology and will demonstrate its implementation with two sustainable novel device architectures. Our innovative vision is based on the multidisciplinary background of its consortium with experts in geosciences, polaritonic photonics, colloidal and supramolecular chemistry, materials engineering, quantum technologies or photovoltaics including high-tech industrial implementation.

In the past 25 years, many integrated photovoltaics (IPV) products have been introduced and demonstrated. Mostly BIPV products, but more recently also IIPV and VIPV products. However, large scale deployment and massive market adoption of these technologies and products have not yet taken place. We are at the brink of a huge scale-up and capacity build-up of PV in Europe, that will have a large effect on our living environment. Therefore, it is now urgent and essential that IPV products become widely available and affordable. This is important (1) to generate solar electricity where the demand is (in the built environment) and (2) to enable multifunctional use of area and space in the built environment. Several parties in the MC2.0 consortium have more than 20 years of experience in IPV development and as such have been involved in many earlier projects and studies. We believe that the number one barrier for large scale market uptake of IPV is the high cost. Other - secondary but also important – barriers are immature sector cooperation and certification issues. The overarching ambition of the MC2.0 project is to demonstrate a cost breakthrough for IPV by means of an advanced manufacturing approach, referred to as “mass customization”. In coherence with this approach, we will contribute to solving the other identified barriers. To realize this ambition, the MC2.0 consortium brings together experts and companies on materials for PV laminates (including PV cells), on manufacturing of PV laminates, on manufacturing of IPV products and on market and application of IPV products.

The main vision of CABRISS project is to develop a circular economy mainly for the photovoltaic, but also for electronic and glass industry. It will consist in the implementation of: (i) recycling technologies to recover In, Ag and Si for the sustainable PV technology and other applications; (ii) a solar cell processing roadmap, which will use Si waste for the high throughput, cost-effective manufacturing of hybrid Si based solar cells and will demonstrate the possibility for the re-usability and recyclability at the end of life of key PV materials. The developed Si solar cells will have the specificity to have a low environmental impact by the implementation of low carbon footprint technologies and as a consequence, the technology will present a low energy payback (about 1 year). The originality of the project relates to the cross-sectorial approach associating together different sectors like the Powder Metallurgy (fabrication of Si powder based low cost substrate), the PV industry (innovative PV Cells) and the industry of recycling (hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy) with a common aim : make use of recycled waste materials (Si, In and Ag). CABRISS focuses mainly on a photovoltaic production value chain, thus demonstrating the cross-sectorial industrial symbiosis with closed-loop processes.

Third generation photovoltaic (PV) technologies offer high performance and customizability for ubiquitous integration (BIPV, VIPV, agrivoltaics, IoT...), and are well suited to Industry 4.0 manufacturing. However, their high-complexity and finely-tuned production processes make them prone to the appearance of critical defects with just small deviations from standard process conditions leading to significant production waste. In this context, Platform-ZERO provides a new paradigm for the third generation PV industry through the development of a self-learning, modular and customizable in-line process monitoring platform that provides in-situ holistic production assessment and control employing non-destructive inspection methods and industry 4.0 Artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools to allow an early detection, correction and/or prevention of pre-critical production faults. In order to achieve this ambitious objective, the Platform-Zero consortium joins together partners with a strong background in advanced characterization of complex materials and process monitoring methodologies; and partners who are leaders at the European level in the development/production of third generation PV devices and related products providing a balanced contribution of academy and industry with a high degree of multidisciplinarity. Platform-ZERO will demonstrate its innovative holistic process monitoring technology through the development, installation and validation at TRL7 of 4 functional demonstrators in different PV and PV-related manufacturing lines: roll-to-roll (CIGS solar foil), sheet-to-sheet (high efficiency CIGS and perovskite) and line flow (smart coatings) PV and PV-related manufacturing lines. The Platform-ZERO technology will contribute in increasing the overall quality and reduce the cost of high-tech PV devices increasing the competitiveness of EU's PV industry and allowing PV to become a key energy source for Europe's transition towards climate-neutral energy generation.