Energy citizenship – the active involvement and empowerment of the people in the energy sector – is a cornerstone to achieve a clean-energy transition and to build a low carbon and resilient future in the European Union within the next decades. Energy communities – non-commercial market actors in the energy sector – can help to achieve this goal once their potential is known and acknowledge by the citizens of the EU. Hence, the overarching objective of this proposed research is to scale-up both energy citizenship and energy communities to achieve greater social acceptability and more durable governance arrangements via actionable policy recommendations for policy makers. To this end, we employ a transdisciplinary team of experts to (i) develop a psychological conceptualization to understand what it takes to become an energy citizen, (ii) identify legal and socio-economic market factors that can hinder or promote an emergence of and engagement of citizens in energy communities, (iii) experimentally test and gather quantitative-empirical evidence for these factors, psychological underpinnings, and for the conduciveness of energy citizenship for broader sustainable policy goals, (iv) use insights from the empirical work to foster the co-creation of digital tools with stakeholders to overcome barriers, (v) distill and disseminate the gained knowledge in Energy Citizenship Dialogues and an Academy, in a series of community Open-Days across five countries, in scientific articles, at conferences, in online repositories for durable access, and in briefings to policy makers on local, national and EU-level. In line with the EU's thrust to empower the people in the energy sector, this innovative research will provide valuable and evidence-based understanding. It will illuminate the socio-economic, psychological and related factors and their interrelations with legal, regulatory and policy aspects to inform practical applications for fostering energy citizenship.

<< Background >>Promoting Healthy Ageing, and specifically an Active & Healthy Lifestyle, is one of the biggest societal and economical challenges the EU is facing. A paradigm shift from health care and cure to prevention is essential since the traditional ways have proven to be insufficient to solve this complex problem. An impact-driven multi-sector approach is necessary to develop innovative products and services to change this for the better.<< Objectives >>The Knowledge Alliance for Communities of Practice for Healthy Lifestyle aimed at developing and sustaining communities of practice (COP) in order to stimulate innovation and socio-economic development in the area of Healthy Ageing.<< Implementation >>The Consortium comes from 7 EU Member States and in 5 countries Local COP were developed. A European COP Support Lab and a European COP Alliance were developed that facilitate the set-up and sustainability of COP. An open access Community Knowledge Hub provides pilot-tested formal and informal blended learning material for managing COP and implementing interventions; whilst an entrepreneurship competition lead into an intensive program to develop entrepreneurial skills and stimulate innovation.<< Results >>In total 6 local COP were fully established who all defined their shared interest, organized learning opportunities, meetings and effective local activities that contributed to a common agenda setting for Healthy Lifestyle. Furthermore, the Alliance between businesses and HEI was extended exponentially and over 30 businesses, 18 HEI and 73 public authorities were involved. All 6 COPs are still running beyond the project funding period and supported by an open online platform www.yanuz.eu.

INTENSSS-PA will support public authorities to integrate the energy theme into spatial planning and regional physical and socioeconomic landscapes. To achieve this objective INTENSS-PA will provide human and institutional capacity building to public authorities and to the wider network of private and public actors related to energy and regional planning by implementing the Living Lab concept, i.e. an innovative environment of co-creation. Specifically, a network of seven Regional Living Labs (RLL) within the seven different Countries/Regions that participate in the consortium (Thessaly-Greece, Calabria-Italy, Castilla y Leon- Spain, Association of Municipalities-Slovenia, Groningen-Netherlands, Triangle-Denmark and Zemgale-Latvia), will be created. Involving public authorities, private and civil society actors, the RLLs are focused on improving and designing a shared and integrated sustainable energy planning concept and on applying it in order to develop seven sustainable energy plans, i.e. one for each Region. The overall approach will involve learning sessions and experiential projects alongside intense networking. Communication and exploitation activities are envisaged including national Roadshows and a survey with policy makers. It is expected that over 200 people participate in the capacity-building activities performed within the RLLs network, while the stakeholders and policy makers informed on the project results and activities will exceed the 1000 individuals. The project objectives are completely inline with topic EE07’s scope, since it considers innovative capacity building activities to public authorities for integrated energy planning through the establishment of a network of RLLs, i.e. of an ecosystem that stakeholders bring their own specific wealth of knowledge and expertise to the collective, helping to achieve boundary spanning knowledge transfer. Special consideration will be provided on planning requirements deriving from 27/2012/EU Directive.

Meeting the challenges of providing European citizens with affordable, safe and nutritious food and of creating healthier and more sustainable City Region Food Systems raises the need for the development of integrated urban food policies that are able to engage with the complexity of the food system. Today’s leading platform for this endeavour is the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, a powerful global network of learning cities experimenting around, and advocating for, the implementation of a holistic approach to food system transformation. FOODTRAILS, a four-year project led by the City of Milan, brings together a Consortium of 19 partners (including 11 EU cities, 3 universities and 5 prominent food system stakeholders), which will be followed by another 21 worldwide cities, to translate the MUFPP’s shared vision and collective commitment to integrated urban food policies into measurable and long-term progress towards sustainable food systems. Building on the momentum created by the recent emergence of cities as key sites to reimagine, enact and engage with food system transformation, FOOD TRAILS will provide city and regional governments and other agents of change with evidence-based policy narratives, co-designed and verified through the activities of 11 multi-objective and multi-actor Living Labs committed to addressing the 4 priority areas of the flagship FOOD 2030 framework. Using the existing knowledge on innovations for food system transformation, the Living Labs will co-design pilot projects that minimize the trade-offs between the 4 priorities of FOOD 2030 and that can function as an entry point for the development of integrated urban food policies. FOODTRAILS will also establish a pan-European Investors’ Living Lab to develop innovative financial instruments that will attract new resources to sustain the urban food policies developed during the project, maximize their visibility and support their replicability across the EU.

REVIVE will significantly advance the state of development of fuel cell refuse trucks, by integrating fuel cell powertrains into 15 vehicles and deploying them in 10 sites across Europe. The project will deliver substantial technical progress by integrating fuel cell systems from three major suppliers and developing effective hardware and control strategies to meet highly demanding refuse truck duty cycles. Specific work on standardisation will ensure that the lessons learned are applicable to the full range of OEMs supplying vehicles into the European market, helping to accelerate the introduction of next generation products. In parallel, the demonstration activities will greatly raise awareness of the viability of fuel cells as a solution to demanding heavy duty vehicle uses (and raise public awareness of hydrogen mobility more generally due to the visibility of the trucks). A successful demonstration of fuel cell trucks will have substantial impacts beyond the technical progress delivered by the project itself, as it will enable public authorities to continue implementing bold decarbonisation strategies by providing clear evidence that viable zero emissions solutions will exist for all vehicle types in the medium term. The project will also support the wider rollout of hydrogen mobility by introducing a further source of hydrogen demand that can improve the economics of existing and future refuelling station deployments, in turn facilitating the rollout of other vehicle types.