SCOoPE project will work directly with energy-intense agro-food industries to implement cross-cutting and collaborative energy management systems addressed to reduce their energy consumption, and will further spread this knowledge within technicians, businesses managers, and energy and agro-food institutions. The project SCOoPE aims at achieving the challenges of the topic EE 16-2014/2015. Regarding the use of cost-effective energy solutions, the project objective is to reduce energy consumption at a short term in a range between 10% and 15% directly in 81 businesses belonging to the agro-food target sectors of the project (namely crop drying, meat and poultry, dairy, and fruit and vegetables transformation). This reduction must be achieved without any decrease in the production capacity of the companies and maintaining correct socioeconomic and environmental conditions. In order to do that, the project will work with the uptake of specific and cross-cutting innovative technologies and techniques, which efficacy has been proven in other industrial sectors, different from agro-food sector, but that are not yet familiar to project’s target sectors. On the other hand, the project pursues larger savings in the medium term with new affordable energy solutions, specifically by developing the concept of “Collaborative Energy Management Systems”. It will take advantage of complementarities and synergies between analysed industrial sites with similar characteristics and will use them for the improvement of their joint energy efficiency. For this purpose, 6 pilot industrial clusters will be run in order to prove the improvements of total energy consumptions and its associated costs, achieved by using common procedures based on ISO 50.001 and supported by an specific software (Dashboard) developed by the project. All these experiences will be promoted to encourage target groups to reduce their energy consumption, following the example of the directly involved companies.

The objective of the ResAlliance is to facilitate information and knowledge flow and increase the awareness, understanding and capacity of farmers and foresters on landscape resilience in Mediterranean countries. More specifically, ResAlliance will gather and assess knowledge and practice needs, gaps, barriers, solutions and good practices to achieve resilient landscapes, with special emphasis on measures against hazards caused by climate change. It will also prepare and facilitate stakeholder engagement through interactive and innovative participation methods. It will finally transfer the knowledge and activate regional landscape resilience governance, with special emphasis in five Mediterranean regions. ResAlliance will create and animate a Mediterranean thematic network on landscape resilience (“LandNet”) for forestry and agriculture. The LandNet will continuously identify, engage and grow new cooperation and networks to access, improve and increase the knowledge of solutions and good practices. The LandNet will prepare the context-specific knowledge and engage and train farmers, foresters and other key stakeholders for knowledge transfer of managerial, technological, financial or governance solutions. The work programme will allow capturing and interpreting most urgent needs while identifying and coupling unknown best practices in research and practice with these needs; compiling a comprehensive description of the state of current farming and forestry practices on landscape resilience to summarise and explain the added-value, the relevance and the cost/benefit aspects of the practices collected, avoiding duplication; delivering an extensive range of useful, applicable, appealing and easy-to-access material in many formats, including EIP-AGRI, EU FarmBook and existing dissemination channels most consulted by farmers and foresters in the countries; and building synergies with OGs and innovation groups from EIP-AGRI, and implement multi-actor approach.

Farming in EU is essential to livelihoods and local development, while facing many challenges such as limited resources and growing environmental challenges. Bio-economy is a solution towards this problem. For a successful bio-economy strategy in farming, further support is needed for the workforce, more knowledge about the impact and business models of bio-economy, raising more awareness and involvement of a wider range of actors. Training in bio-economy is still absent in many EU countries and there is a shortage of people with higher education in the farming sector. The transition to bio-economy needs professionals with multidisciplinary, managerial, and cross-sectoral expertise. Higher education and vocational training can play a critical role in this transition integrating dedicated curricula and training. RELIEF aims to develop and deliver an innovative approach for teaching bio-economy in farming, by developing specific learning resources addressing HEIs students and farming practitioners. HEIs, VETs, farmer consultants, research institutes, and social partners from Italy, Greece, Sweden, Cyprus and Portugal will deliver a high-quality network within the EU to advance bio-economy in the farming agenda. RELIEF will deliver a training needs analysis and develop two curricula in bio-economy, for HE students, farming practitioners and farmers exploring the key areas that are critical for the implementation of business models and strategies towards bio-economy in farming. Based on this knowledge, RELIEF will design and pilot learning units which will incorporate a mix of training methodologies. An e-learning platform will offer learning resources in 5 languages for self-training and networking to support the long-term sustainability of farming enterprises. RELIEF will stimulate significant changes in the university curricula, course content, and VET training by integrating a learner-centred approach based on problem-based, active and transformational learning