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This document collects the summaries of the interviews carried out with various stakeholders in the Requena-Utiel region from March to October 2021. The topics covered in these interviews focused on the governance of the aquifer, the creation of the Central Board of Users of the Requena-Utiel Underground Mass and the relationships between the different users, their perception of the quantitative and qualitative state of the aquifer and the future actions to take for sustainable management. The questionnaire written by the team from Bo��azi��i University, Turkey, was taken into account when preparing the interviews. This project is part of the PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 1923.

This report provides information on energy demand profiles and commercial aspects relevant to the end-users involved in the ASTEP project.

This document updates the work plan and the schedule of the ASTEP project at M18. The Gantt chart, the Pert chart and the Work Breakdown Structure of the project are presented, including the schedule of Tasks and Subtasks, their responsible partner and person, the related deliverables and their dependencies.

After the individual interviews carried out with the users and stakeholders of the Requena-Utiel aquifer, Spain, from March to October 2021, the Spanish living lab was held on the 4th of March 2022 in Requena city. The Spanish team of the PRIMA project eGroundwater and the Spanish team of the InTheMED project, both form the Universitat Politècnica de València, organized this event. This document contains the summaries of the three sessions in which the living lab was divided. This project is part of the PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 1923.

This document reports the different designs that have been considered as shell-side inserts for the thermal energy store system of ASTEP. A discussion on the ability of the suggested designs to provide a good heat transfer, low thermal resistance between the tube and the insert, a limited use of material and a short production time, are taken into consideration. As a result of this, three cast-alloy designs are built, instrumented and tested in a test rig at PWR. Results in vertical position demonstrate the superior performance of the Y-shape insert, which has been selected as the shell-side insert design for the ASTEP thermal energy store concept. Importantly, this design will be similar for the two applications of ASTEP.

The report covers the first phase (M18 report) of the assessment of the potential environmental impacts of ASTEP modular systems throughout the life cycle. It includes a literature review on the environmental impact of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants and Environmental assessment of ASTEP systems.

AbstractInternational demand for wood and other forest products continues to grow rapidly, and uncertainties remain about how animal communities will respond to intensifying resource extraction associated with woody bioenergy production. We examined changes in alpha and beta diversity of bats, bees, birds, and reptiles across wood production landscapes in the southeastern United States, a biodiversity hotspot that is one of the principal sources of woody biomass globally. We sampled across a spatial gradient of paired forest land‐uses (representing pre and postharvest) that allowed us to evaluate biological community changes resulting from several types of biomass harvest. Short‐rotation practices and residue removal following clearcuts were associated with reduced alpha diversity (−14.1 and −13.9 species, respectively) and lower beta diversity (i.e., Jaccard dissimilarity) between land‐use pairs (0.46 and 0.50, respectively), whereas midrotation thinning increased alpha (+3.5 species) and beta diversity (0.59). Over the course of a stand rotation in a single location, biomass harvesting generally led to less biodiversity. Cross‐taxa responses to resource extraction were poorly predicted by alpha diversity: correlations in responses between taxonomic groups were highly variable (−0.2 to 0.4) with large uncertainties. In contrast, beta diversity patterns were highly consistent and predictable across taxa, where correlations in responses between taxonomic groups were all positive (0.05–0.4) with more narrow uncertainties. Beta diversity may, therefore, be a more reliable and information‐rich indicator than alpha diversity in understanding animal community response to landscape change. Patterns in beta diversity were primarily driven by turnover instead of species loss or gain, indicating that wood extraction generates habitats that support different biological communities.

The report covers the first phase (M25 report) of the D8.2 that focuses on the assessment of the economic impacts of ASTEP modular systems throughout the life cycle. It includes a systematic literature review on the economic impact of different solar thermal plants like parabolic trough (PT), linear Fresnel (LFR), solar tower (ST) and solar dish (SD) plants. Different types of financial metrics like levelized cost of Energy (LCOE), net present value (NPV), investment/capital cost, total life cycle cost (TLCC), payback period, benefit- cost ratio (BRC), internal rate of return (IRR) and revenues were considered. It was found that ST plant had a lower average Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) than the PT plant at 100 MW and 200 MW capacity. The ST plant had a higher average NPV than the PT plant at 50 MW and 100 MW capacity. A lack of studies on the external environmental costs of solar thermal plants was observed. There is a need for more research in the economic assessment of solar thermal plants with capacities below 50 MW and above 100 MW to enable the economic comparison of solar thermal plants of different plant capacities. The report covers economic LCA of the ASTEP system that will be developed and applied on two end-users, Mandrekas & ArcelorMittal, located in Greece and Romania, at two different latitudes. Finally, the report explains the development of a new software tool using dynamic LCA to improve the results of the static LCA of the ASTEP system. The LCA tool will be used for the environmental and economic assessment of the systems that use solar thermal energy and high temperatures to provide heating and cooling for industrial processes such as the ASTEP system.

Solar PV is already the cheapest option to produce electricity in many world regions. Moreover, the price of utility-scale solar power plants in 2050, while highly uncertain, will decrease further with present-day learning rates and projected solar capacities. In this article, we analyze how possible future costs of solar and other characteristics affect the optimal share of electricity demand supplied by solar in different energy systems. We first use a simplified, open, hourly resolved, copper-plate model for four isolated regions, with only wind and solar generation and storage allowed, to identify the core dynamics while sweeping the cost of solar. Using this model, we show that future cost assumptions of utility solar affect energy systems in regions with comparable solar and wind potential compared to regions with much stronger solar or much stronger wind potential. Then, we use a multicountry, networked, sector-coupled model of the European energy system (PyPSA-Eur-Sec) to analyze not only the effect of solar character-istics in a comprehensive energy system, but also how our model assumptions themselves affect the optimal share of solar. We find that assumptions of system properties, such as transmission or sector-coupling can greatly affect the optimal solar penetration at the country level.