ELABORATOR uses a holistic approach for planning, designing, implementing and deploying specific innovations and interventions towards safe, inclusive and sustainable urban mobility. These interventions, consist of smart enforcement tools, space redesign and dynamic allocation, shared services, and integration of active and green modes of transportation. They will be specifically co-designed and co-created with identified vulnerable to exclusion user groups, local authorities and relevant stakeholders. The interventions will be demonstrated in 6 Lighthouse and 6 Follower cities across Europe with three principal aims: i) to collect, assess and analyse user needs and requirements towards a safe and inclusive mobility and climate neutral cities; ii) to collect and share rich information sets made of real data, traces from dedicated toolkits, users and stakeholders opinions among the cities, so as to increase the take up of the innovations via a twinning approach and iii) to generate detailed guidelines, policies, future roadmap and built capacity for service providers, planning authorities and urban designers for the optimum integration of such inclusive and safe mobility interventions into Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). The Lighthouse cities are: Milan (Italy), Copenhagen (Denmark), Helsinki (Finland), Issy-les-Moulineaux (France), Zaragoza (Spain) and Trikala (Greece). The Follower cities are Lund (Sweden), Liberec (Czech Republic), Velejne (Slovenia), Ioannina (Greece), Split (Croatia) and Krusevac (Serbia).

The European plastic market is not currently aligned with the circular economy. More than 25.8 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced per year in the EU28 being recycled only 29.7%. This represents a clear loose in the plastic market loop (losses of €10.56bn). Moreover, this goes against the EU legislation on waste (high environmental impact; 23.8 Mt of CO2). Low recycling rates of plastic are mainly due to the situation of packaging waste (i.e. main plastic waste fraction), since it is mainly domestic residue and consequently the quality of the material collected depends on the system of segregation available and the environmental awareness of citizens. PlastiCircle aims to develop and implement a holistic process to increase recycling rates of packaging waste in Europe. This will allow to reprocess again plastic waste in the same value chain (i.e. Circular economy; closure of plastic loop). This process is based on four axes: collection (to increase quantity of packaging collected), transport (to reduce costs of recovered plastic), sorting (to increase quality of recovered plastic), and valorization in value-added products (i.e. foam boards, automotive parts like engine covers/bumpers/dashboards, bituminous roofing membranes, garbage bags, asphalt sheets/roofing felts and urban furniture like fences/benches/protection walls). The target is to increase collection from 81.7% to 87% and valorization in a 9.8%. The implementation of PlastiCircle approach in Europe have the potential to increase collected plastic in 861,250t (reaching 14.14 Mt) and valorization in 1.59Mt. The valorization of this new material, represents a market value of €2.86bn-€7.95bn. Taking into account current figures of the plastic sector (turnover €350bn, 62,000 companies, 1.45M employees), this could imply creation of 500-1400 new companies and the generation of 11,900-33,000 new jobs in the medium to long term if PlastiCircle approach is extended in a EU level.

While EU policy assigns a primary role to Energy Efficiency (EE), the lack of a holistic understanding of the impact of EE investments has hindered its integration in the policy-making process. Coordination between demand and supply side of energy policy is not targeted, and there is need to gather the evidence on the benefits of EE in ecological and socio-economic terms as well as on its interactions with the broader policy context and energy market. The EERAdata project aims to address this challenge by supporting policy decisions and related stakeholders with an organic set of instruments to prioritise investments in energy efficiency in the context of the European building stock and its potential for renovation. The EERAdata project will develop and test a decision-support tool to help local administrations in the collection and processing of their building and demographic data towards an assessment and prioritization of EE measures in planning, renovating and constructing buildings. The tool will be operationalized through a software application capable of merging data from various sources, formats and fields, which will then model and assess the impact of energy efficiency investment in buildings across several categories of impact, and against a range of supply-side measures. Partner municipalities will participate to the design of the tool and test its application in regional pilots. The pilots will be part of a wider process of stakeholder engagement aimed at ensuring the usefulness of the different instruments, their applicability across different geographical and economic contexts, and its adoption beyond the life-span of the project. To this end, the project team will establish regional networks of stakeholders centred around the partner municipalities. These networks will be engaged throughout the project to bridge the gap between demand- and supply-side of energy policy.

The spotlight on health impacts of poor air quality and the renewed focus on reducing GHG emissions in recent years provide a strong impetus for cities to seek clean, low carbon transport solutions. When it comes to meeting growing demands for public transport and addressing environmental issues, hydrogen fuel cell (FC) buses offer significant potential. A commercialisation process for FC buses is underway, through which a shared vision has been agreed between vehicle suppliers and their customers. This is based on reducing costs through scale via a phased approach of pre-commercial demonstrations that will provide the evidence for wider uptake of these vehicles in the 2020s. The first step in upscaling FC bus deployment is underway through the JIVE project, which began in January 2017. JIVE 2 is its successor and is Europe’s most ambitious FC bus project to date: 152 buses in 14 cities across seven countries. JIVE 2 involves regions with experience of the technology scaling up fuel cell bus fleets (e.g. Cologne), and those seeking to build their knowledge and experience by demonstrating FC buses in small fleets for the first time (e.g. Auxerre, Gävleborg). All deployment locations in JIVE 2 share an ambition to increase the size of their FC bus fleets following successful initial demonstrations, hence the participating cities/regions will be natural locations for larger scale roll-out of the technology in the 2020s. A comprehensive data monitoring and assessment exercise will capture the relevant evidence to inform next steps for the sector, and the project’s impacts will be maximised by a high-impact dissemination campaign. This will involve reaching wide audiences via various channels, including a series of international Zero Emission Bus Conferences. The JIVE and JIVE 2 projects together will see the deployment and operation of nearly 300 FC buses in 22 European cities/regions, thus providing a sound basis for further development of this sector.

POCITYF supports the Lighthouse cities of Evora (PT) and Alkmaar (NL) and their Fellow cities Granada (ES), Bari (ΙΤ), Celje (SI), Ujpest (HU), Ioannina (GR) and Hvidovre (DK) to address their urgent need to deliver positive energy blocks and districts in their cities, towards rendering their mixed urban environment (also including the case of cultural protected buildings) into cheaper, better accessible, healthier and more reliable. By demonstrating in overall 10 integrated solutions (ISs), comprising 73 individual innovative elements (technologies, tools, methods), rooted under existing City Information Platforms (CIPs), POCITYF quantifies their value, and connects interests of many different stakeholders in innovative business models, allowing for upscale and replication of those solutions in a form of a validated roadmap for sustainable cities across Europe and world-wide. To achieve this, POCITYF works along 4 Energy Transition Tracks (ETTs), encompassing the ISs according to the role each one serves for. ETT#1 focuses on the examination and application of ISs transforming existing and new building stock into Energy Positive, while ETT#2 focuses on the application of a) grid flexibility strategies and b) storage systems, supported by DSM platforms for optimizing energy flows to maximize self-consumption and reduce grid stress. ETT#3 with its merit of innovation offers the integration of e-Mobility to as well promote the decarbonisation of the mobility sector. The 3 ETTs under the coordination of ETT#4, which links existing CIPs with innovative apps and other instruments, offers inclusive and holistic services for interdisciplinary citizen engagement and co-creation of them with the city stakeholders and industry, towards the development of each city’s own bold city-vision up to 2050. Through POCITYF the two LHs will achieve a local RES penetration of 16.2 GWh/y, energy savings of 2.32 GWh/y and an emission reduction of 9,743 tons CO2eq/y within their districts.