The CIRCOFIN project brings together 4 cities and regions to transition to a circular economy in the construction and buildings sector. Munich, Copenhagen, Scotland and Lisbon will prepare investment-ready circular construction hubs (CCH) and showcase how they transform local and regional markets for secondary building components and materials. CCH cover physical material banks and digital infrastructure to provide the resource basis for the EU Taxonomy requirements for construction. To date, CCH have not successfully scaled-up across Europe. The project will demonstrate that CCHs can become bankable projects at scale and provide lucrative investment opportunities for financiers. The showcases develop sound technical, business, and financial plans of more than 80 M€ total investment volume. CIRCOFIN streamlines a common project development assistance (PDA) methodology for CCH, used and validated by the showcases. The methodology results in a CCH Toolbox, which consists of customizable components for all project development stages, from pre-feasibility to due diligence and bankability appraisal. It covers all elements of CCH – physical design, digital infrastructure, logistics, business models, operation models and financial models. The results will be published as a CCH Cookbook with concrete facts and figures, ready for widespread replication by other cities and regions. Replication and roll-out aim to trigger uptake in 30 other cities and regions from the CCRI, Circular Cities Declaration and the Mission Cities of the 100 Climate-neutral and Smart Cities Mission. Investors and EU financial initiatives will gain expertise in advising CCH projects via robust technical and operational insights and learn how to review associated risks, to make better investment decisions on circular economy projects. Standardization will on CEN and ISO as well as policy recommendations improve regulation to enable business and investment cases for CCH market uptake in Europe.

NATURE-3B aims to make a significant contribution by developing (i) Nature-Protecting Benchmarks for investors such as pension funds or insurance akin to EU Paris-Aligned Benchmarks (EU PABs), (ii) a Nature-Protecting Bond framework particularly targeted at municipalities and corporates, and (i) six tools for central banks, ESAs & NCAs (see Outcomes 1-6 in the Consortium Overview below), As a consortium including three current members of the EU’s Platform on Sustainable Finance including the Head of its Data Science Hub and lead author of EU PABs, NATURE-3B is uniquely positioned to achieve real world impact. Following the success of EU PABs, which grew beyond €100 billion in assets within less than 3 years (European Commission, 2023), the consortium expects that Nature-Protecting Benchmarks can exceed €10bn within three years after the launch. Given the fortunate timing of the EU Green Bond Standard applying from December 21st 2024, and the 60+ corporate and municipality supporters already interested in the concept of Nature-Protecting Bonds, the consortium expects an issuance volume of €30bn within 3 years of launch. These could, for instance, fund marine ecosystem protection of Gozo (Malta), support the Pape Nature Reserve of Liepaja (Latvia) or encourage forest restoration near Sanok in southeast Poland. With considerable work experience with central banks, ESAs and NCAs, NATURE-3B is confident that 15 of them will use a relevant tool following the project. The tools include: (1) Nature Dependency Dashboard, (2) Asset level risk database, (3) Nature-related scenarios portal, (4) Nature-related stress test models, (5) Portfolio & financial system nature alignment tool, (6) Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools for SFRD biodiversity impact analysis and TNFD scoring.

The European Commission’s Mission for “100 Climate-neutral and Smart Cities by 2030” (“the Cities Mission”) seeks to accelerate Europe’s climate action commitments as part of the European Green Deal, whose ambition is to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The Cities Mission’s central tenet is to elevate and deepen the commitment to pursue systemic change through research and innovation, setting an ambition for cities of unprecedented scope and scale. In order to achieve such effects, a demand-driven Mission Platform has been established to provide tailored assistance and services to participating cities and those learning from them. As a part of the Horizon 2020 Work Programme, Building a low-carbon, climate resilient future: Green Deal call, the “LC-GD- 1-2-2020: Towards Climate-Neutral and Socially Innovative Cities” topic selected the four-year project NetZeroCities to establish the Mission Platform, which began work at the same time as the formal establishment of the Cities Mission, in October 2021. The scope of work presented herein will comprise the second Specific Grant Agreement (SGA2-NZC) development under the Framework Partnership Agreement FPA-NZC for the Mission Platform to scale and continue operations through 2027. Activities primarily focus on two objectives: the first to reinforce the support received by cities selected to participate in the Mission on financing their roadmap of activities towards climate neutrality, and the second to develop basic Mission Platform services for cities who are willing to commit to climate neutrality on a longer timescale than the Cities Mission.

Effective investment and financing opportunities for circular economy projects in Europe are still few and far in between. Investors need to gain trust in circular economy projects. Projects need to become less risky and bankable, based on new and re-designed finance solutions and business models. Transaction costs need to be decreased and the private finance community needs to be engaged to address legal, administrative and market challenges. The DEFINITE-CCRI project establishes a deal engine, providing technical, financial and circular economy expertise through local project development assistance in an unprecedented and streamlined process to cities, regions and project developers. The deal engine will be built with investors and finance partners and the goal to launch investments in four circular economy projects of up to EUR 20 million investment volume per project, amounting to a total portfolio volume of up to EUR 80 million. The DEFINITE-CCRI will demonstrate the bankability of high-impact circularity projects and increases maturity and investor trust in circular economy innovation. It closes the gap between project developers in cities and regions on one side, and investors and finance partners on the other. The DEFINITE-CCRI project co-creates and proves an end-to-end PDA process, aggregating risk-mitigation, EU Taxonomy compliance, circularity criteria and technical and financial engineering in a single project development service for the CCRI’s service portfolio. Partners commit to operate the deal-engine sustainably beyond the project lifetime. This will inject the financial, technical and managerial know-how into urban circular transitions and ultimately contribute to lower virgin non-renewable material use, lower GHG emissions and more just and inclusive circular employment in line with the European Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan and the Bioeconomy Strategy.

SWARM-E is a trans- and multi-disciplinary approach for sustainable, affordable and modern energy access and well-being for Sub-Saharan Africa, aligned with the AU-EU Agenda 2063. SWARM-E consists of several layers: 1) an innovative renewable electricity infrastructure, the SWARM grid, a circular and cyber-smart network where end-users exchange electricity of their solar home systems and form the nodes of a smart grid which can dynamically grow to meet demand; 2) unlocking unutilised renewable energy for productive uses in the water energy food nexus – cold storage, water purification, water pumping and irrigation, carpentry; 3) transfer and decentralisation of Global North energy transformation innovations – decentralised hydrogen production for cleaner cooking, bi-directional charging of light electric vehicles (two- and three-wheelers) to transport goods and people. SWARM-E builds on network effects generated through the inclusion of localised economies with strong producer-consumer linkages embedded within larger systems of trade and exchange for the creation of bottom-up energy communities. SWARM-E will operate and replicate 5 pilots in Rwanda and Tanzania, under which 5 SWARM grids are installed, delivering 6.9 GWh of renewable electricity while generating income through the trading of electricity and avoiding the discard of 3,200 batteries; 5 water purification applications deliver 101.M L of clean water; 15 light electric vehicles deliver farmers’ produce, power mobile productive uses and cold storage, increasing the yields of 1,000 farmers and reducing the food losses of more than 5,000; 700 kg of H2 are blended with LPG for cleaner cooking, and more than 500 jobs for women and youth are created. The balanced participation of EU and AU private, public and civil society organisations in the consortium will ensure the knowledge transfer North-South and South-South, and the sustainability of value chains based on local value creation and entrepreneurship.