R-Aces means a step-change in the contribution of European Industry to the climate targets of the EU. The sector after all represents 25% of all energy demand – and 50% of all cooling and heating - on the continent; yet only 16% comes from renewables. By focusing on collective measures and clustering, the efficiency of industry can be drastically increased. The focus of R-Aces therefore is to turn high-potential, high-impact industrial clusters into Ecoregions that achieve at least a 10% reduction in emissions. An Ecoregion is an area where energy, material and information exchanges occur between various companies and actors to reduce waste and energy/material consumption. Each region is centered on an (eco-)industrial park or (eco-)business park, linked to its surroundings by a 4th/5th generation district heating/cooling network. The consortium sees this project as a capping stone, condensing the knowledge and experience gathered throughout H2020 into a set of three focused tools embedded in selected support actions. The tools consist of an assessment tool; legal decision support for joint contracts; and a smart energy management platform for clusters. The support actions are built around peer-to-peer learning, more formal coursework and serious games. Together they enable a cluster to really become an EcoRegion and set up meaningful energy collaboration. The entire package of tools and support is aimed at the high-potential clusters identified in the European Thermal Roadmap. It will be validated in three of them (all are part of the consortium); actively deployed in another seven; and disseminated to ninety of them. In addition, the tools and support methodology will be made available to third parties in a sustainable way after the end of this two-year project. The project consortium consists of the entire value chain needed for energy collaboration – suppliers, ESCO, cluster managers, support – and represents many years of proven experience in this field.

Value-added Innovation in fooD chAins (VIDA) will nurture and harness the growth and innovation potential of SMEs working across European food c hains, bringing together four complementary and mutually dependant sectors; food, energy, water and key enabling technologies (KET). VIDA will strengthen current and develop new cross-sectoral industrial value chains within the food production and processing industries through a combination of direct and indirect innovation actions, as well as support and capacity building measures. These will include open-innovation and virtual collaboration tools, mentoring and knowledge-sharing activities and a 'twin-track' innovation voucher scheme which will support the realisation of high-TRL, large-scale, demonstration and commercialisation projects across Europe. We will effect change among more than 6200 organisations, primarily SMEs. VIDA combines expertise from four complementary European Strategic Cluster Partnerships (ESCPs): FoodPackLab, EU4Food, Energy in Water and AdPack, with a direct reach of over 700 SMEs across the partner clusters (and 2100 SMEs across the collaborating ESCPs). The collaborating partners have been carefully selected to ensure a complementary balance of geographies, knowledge, experience and expertise within VIDA's four sectors, and maximise the potential for cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary exchanges to create new industrial value chains. VIDA will operate for 3.5 years with a total budget of €5,031,141.25. VIDA will allocate more that 81% of the total project budget for innovation in SMEs. €3,355,000 of the budget will be used to provide specialist innovation vouchers, and catalyse large-scale demonstrations with commercialisation innovation projects, involving >100 beneficiaries.

SYSCHEMIQ will demonstrate how to migrate to a circular urban-industrial cross-border district, i.e. the CHEMELOT Circular Hub (CCH) in the Trilateral Euregio of NL, BE and DE. A Circular Economy Action Plan and a (4BEUR) Investment Agenda (2020-2030) are available. Stakeholder involvement schemes are in place, to allow governance within an ecosystem (Regional Government, Municipality, Industries, Educational and Research Institutes, Utilities and Cluster Management): a new way of working to overcome key-bottlenecks. Investment decisions have been made to set up mechanical recycling (4kT/a) and a 150 M€ semi-industrial (18kT/a) chemical pilot recycling plant, to run demos with optimised real-life Mixed Plastic Waste (MPW) streams. We will demo systemic solutions 1) a novel Dual-Track multistakeholder governance model, underpinned by the recently developed Plastic Recycling Impact Scenario: PRISM model (TRL6), and CIMS digital-twin 2) the CCH circular governance model (TRL6), 3) community-based innovation schemes; a Circular City Lab, citizens incentives schemes, incubator and novel skills development and innovation programmes with students (vocational, professional and academic) in a Circular Learning Lab (CHILL), 4) new plastic waste collection, sorting standards/protocols and technologies (e.g. prototype sorting line TRL6) for alignment of material flows in the value chain, 5) new Design rules (TRL 5) for plastic packaging products favouring mechanical and chemical recycling. Considering circa 1.1 Mt of MPW in NL and 30 Mt in EU, scenario calculations promise huge savings of 11.4 Mt CO2 eq./a and 190 kT/a virgin polyolefins. Business modelling and upscaling study will prepare investments in a 100-400 kT/a full-scale recycling facility. A structured Twinning programme with at least 5 selected regions (incl. Flanders and Lombardy), will foster replication, with the support of EU Platform organisations (ECRN, PRE) and in collaboration with the CCRI.

Gathering 22 partners from the EU, Norway, Switzerland and Ukraine, iDesignRES aims to provide public authorities and network operators with open-source toolboxes allowing to plan and to optimise the uptake of low and zero emission energy sources at regional, national and European scales. With these open-source tools, iDesignRES provides latest multi-physics component energy models, comprehensive energy system modelling (in particular assembling of component models), long-term multi-carrier grid planning and optimisation of investment and operation. iDesignRES embraces a new degree of openness, transparency and accessibility to use energy system models and their components. It delivers a harmonized data structure compatible with all modelling approaches (i.e., standardized in a common modelling language). iDesignRES relies on an already built database compliant with these standardized data formats. Based on this modelling and data infrastructure, iDesignRES will develop a unique and innovative cloud-hub platform to run any energy system model online. This will facilitate research collaboration (easier software testing and version control), and increase computational performance (open licenses, cloud services and supercomputing) for average users. To demonstrate and validate the tools, iDesignRES has five real-life cases: two macro region cases (North Sea area and South East Europe), two industrial clusters (Basque and Lombardy regions), and one expansion case in Ukraine. The models and scenario results are combined in the final iDesignRES visualisation tools aimed to inform policy makers and grid operators. The outcome is that the public and relevant authorities can design a renewable energy system entirely online with easily accessible suite of tools, capable to: model at high spatial-temporal resolutions (sub-hourly NUTS level2 regions), to represent detail energy system physics, and to assemble models with a high degree of modularity.