FIC-FIGHTERS is a local democracy project. It is the search for new economic models deliberately agreed to manage of waste that harms the natural and cultural heritage. It is a space for discussion on the adoption of alternatives for wastes that has been accumulating near our cities for decades. The project will involve different local actors, industries, authorities, SMEs, RTD centers, and universities to inclusively scale up to TRL6-7 waste recovery processes under the premises of the circular economy, focusing on the valorization of phosphogypsum waste (PG) to generate sustainable raw materials for use in the paper, cement, batteries, fertilizers and detergents industries. For 48 months, the different actors, in cooperation with the CCRI, will be involved in making the new circular business models a reality. The project will: 1) Build a mobile pilot plant (TRL7) based on optimised results and digital twin of the processes to demonstrate the sustainable production of raw materials (sodium sulfate, REE and P, aluminum hydroxide, ammonium sulfate and precipitated calcium carbonate) for different industries, starting from phosphogypsum and other wastes. 2) Create a PG forum for local discussions and develop local workshops in each of the 6 case studies, including citizen participation, addressing socio-economic, environmental and regulation aspects of the new circular business models developed to become a reality and reaching trust and acceptance. 3) Address the flexibility and replicability of the valorization processes by involving 7 case studies and create the first known PG Exploitation Portal aiming to identify, characterise, and reach all European cities with same problematic. 4) Contribute to knowledge exchange in clustering and CCRI events; creating a Community of Practice and making the results of the project publicly available and exploitable, addressing IP protection. 5) Provide guidelines to reach circularity based on LCA, LCC, social and H&S studies.

Europe faces the joint challenge of decarbonising ever newer sectors and applications, whilst also seeking clean waste treatment and valorisation pathways. With over 300Mt of waste generated each year, Europe could produce up to 30Mt of clean hydrogen from waste to accelerate the decarbonisation of challenging sectors like aviation and heavy industry. However, exploiting this energy potential remains a challenge and so far, no robust and cost-effective solutions has been successfully commercialised. HYIELD aims to open a new low-cost pathway for clean hydrogen production and waste disposal. The project proposes a novel multi-stage steam gasification and syngas purification plant concept, which will efficiently convert different organic waste streams into hydrogen and is expected to achieve H2 99.97% purity and 62-74% energy conversion efficiency. The concept includes several beyond state-of-the-art innovations, including a novel process design, waste heat exploitation, Water-Gas-Shift membrane reactor, low-pressure metal hydride storage buffer and IA driven digital twin. The solution will be implemented at 3MW scale in a cement plant in Spain, where the hydrogen will be exploited for cement kiln firing. The demonstrator is expected to operate for 4,000h over a 15-month testing period with at least 10 different organic waste streams, treating over 3.9kt of dry material and producing 650t of hydrogen. It will also carry out the groundwork for up-scaling post-project locally and across the EU, working closely with industrial partners from the cement, steel, copper and gas sectors. It is forecasted that the solution will be able to deliver a Levelized Cost of Hydrogen of 2.19€/kg at industrial scale (20,000t/year waste treated), far below current electrolyser pathways (>5.5€/kg). The project is led by a consortium of Europe’s leading research groups, technology developers and industrial players in the hydrogen sector, from Spain, France, Germany, Norway and Luxembourg.

The benefits of high efficiency concentrated solar power (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV) are well known: environmental protection, economic growth, job creation, energy security. Those technologies can only be applied properly in regions with annual mean radiation values higher than 1750 kWh/m2 per year. CSP has advantages in front of PV: possible 24h continuous electricity production, electricity and heat generation, heat for distributed in cogeneration plants. Within CSP, four technologies have been currently developed: parabolic trough collector (PTC), tower solar power, Stirling/ dish collector and linear Fresnel collector with its advance type named compact linear Fresnel collector. In 2015, there is global 4GWe production (96% PTC), almost 3GWe are under construction. However for huge deployment, a reduction of Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is imperative for industry consolidation, when nowadays is around 0.16 – 0.22 €/KWh depending on the size plant, Direct Normal Irradiance and the legal framework of site installation. CSP main components: solar field for solar to thermal conversion, power block for thermal to electrical conversion, and thermal storage system are the key to reduce LCOE. IN-POWER project will develop High efficiency solar harvesting CSP architectures based on holistic materials and innovative manufacturing process to allow a Innovation effort mainly focus in advanced materials such as High Reflectance Tailored Shape light Free glass mirror, High working temperature absorber in Vacuum Free receiver, optimized Reduced Mass support structure allow upgrading current solar field. IN-POWER reduce environmental impact also by reducing THREE times standard thermal storage systems by novel thermal storage materials; and a amazing reduction FOUR TIMES the required land extension in comparison of current mature PTC power generation with the same thermal power output. IN-POWER solution will bring LCOE below 0.10 €/KWh beyond 2020.

According to JRC CSP platform, with an increased efficiency of component and price reduction, 11 % of EU electricity could be produced by CSP by 2050. In the EC energy strategy, CSP finds mention as a potential dispatchable RES thus increasing potential market/need for CSP if coupled with flexible, high performant and low CAPEX power conversion units. In this sense sCO2 has been worldwide studied for several years as enabling technology to promote CSP widespread. SOLARSCO2OL presents sCO2 cycles as key enabling technology to facilitate a larger deployment of CSP in EU panorama which is composed (also considering available surfaces and DNI) by medium temperature application (most of them Parabolic trough – Tmax = 550°c) and small/medium size plants enhancing their performances (efficiency, flexibility, yearly production) and reducing their LCOE. Considering that compared to organic and steam based Rankine, sCO2 cycles achieve high efficiencies over a wide temperature of range of heat sources with lower CAPEX, lower OPEX, no use of water as operating fluid (a plus for arid CSP plants area), smaller system footprint, higher operational flexibility, SOLARSCO2OL would like to demonstrate in Evora Molten Salt platform facility the first MW Scale EU sCO2 power block operating coupled with a MS CSP. SOLARSCO2OL will capitalize previous EU expertise (SCARABEUS, sCO2-flex, MUSTEC), bridging the gap with extra-EU countries R&D on these topics and studying different plant layouts also to enhance CSP plants flexibility to enable them to provide soon grid flexibility services. SOLARSCO2OL is driven by an industry oriented consortium which promotes the replication of this concept towards its complete marketability in 2030: this will be properly studied via scale up feasibility studies, environmental and social analysis encouraging business cases in EU (particularly in Italy and Spain as two of the most promising EU CSP countries) and Morocco thanks to MASEN.

Orchestrating an interoperable sovereign federated Multi-vector Energy data space built on open standards and ready for GAia-X The aim of OMEGA-X is to implement a data space (based on European common standards), including federated infrastructure, data marketplace and service marketplace, involving data sharing between different stakeholders and demonstrating its value for real and concrete Energy use cases and needs, while guaranteeing scalability and interoperability with other data space initiatives, not just for energy but also cross-sector. The proposed concept and architecture heavily rely on the approaches adopted by IDSA, GAIA-X, FIWARE, BDVA/DAIRO and SGAM as major EU references regarding data spaces. It will pursue the GAIA-X label, which ensures highest standards on protection, security, transparency, openess and trust, avoids vendor lock-in and restricted to EU countries. • Federated infrastructure for data ingestion. There are a lot of independent platforms for data ingestion/storage, open and private. The goal is to define the minimum interoperability and federation requirements needed for these platforms to adhere to the Energy Data Space and be able to share data in a trusted and secure way. • Data Space Marketplaces. This is the common ground where data, which is already harmonized semantically, is indexed, and referenced, maintaining always the required standards of identity, trust and sovereignty. Using the data space as baseline, a marketplace is implemented for stakeholders to share, use and monetize data and services. Data/service providers will be able to advertise their data/services, and data/service users will be able to discover multiple data sets and services. • Advanced Energy Use Case demonstration. Using all aforementioned layers underneath, 4 use cases families (Renewables, LEC, Electromobility and Flexibiilty) will showcased o prove the value of having a common data space for a particular problem identified by energy stakeholders.