While building on results of recently (or soon to be) concluded EU projects, NEON will undertake coordination and support activities to advance the leveraging technologies and concepts in order to deliver the next-generation integrated energy services for communities, targeted to enhance the life quality of European citizens, while improving the performance of energy system. In this endeavour, NEON will exploit building energy efficiency, renewable energy generation and storage, and demand flexibility to increase energy savings, reduce CO2 emissions, and provide cost savings across sectors. NEON will engage grid stakeholders, service providers and final consumers to establish, in co-creation, the cross-sectoral arrangements and underlying service concepts. NEON will join multi-measure energy efficiency interventions and advanced control capabilities to maximize the positive impact of energy efficiency by improving the building operation performance and make the demand-side flexibility as manageable and procurable resource. NEON will advance the energy efficiency services already available on the market and couple them with other energy services and non-energy benefits, providing an integrated approach to energy generation, storage and consumption management. To enable servitization of proposed concepts, NEON will bring innovative business and contracting models by integrating EPC with P4P schemes, and establish innovative M&V methodology. The concept of Citizen Energy Communities (CECs), as introduced by Directive (EU) 2019/944, will be leveraged to set the legal and business foundations to enable faster market uptake, and facilitate communities, both residential and non-residential, in becoming energy-efficient. The proposed service concepts and business models will be showcased in 4 CEC setups (residential, non-residential and mixed) serving as early adopters, whereby follow-up replication plans across 7 “follower” communities will be developed during the project.

iDistributedPV´s aim is developing affordable integrated solutions to enhance the penetration of distributed solar PV (buildings) based on the effective integration of solar PV equipment, energy storage, monitoring and controlling strategies and procedures, active demand management, smart technologies and the integration of procedures in the power distribution system according to market criteria. The project will develop the concept of “prosumer”: a player that consumes and produces electricity in his facilities (solar PV). iDistributedPV will be the EU common place for enhancing the distributed solar PV: promoters, equipment manufacturers, DSOs, energy policy experts and R&D players will work together to develop affordable solutions, and produce business and management models for these solutions. The most promising solutions will be validated according to technical and economic criteria (for every solution a cost-benefit analysis will be elaborated) in five different European real distribution grids (Greece, Lithuania, Spain, Poland and Germany) considering different climatic, regulatory and technical frameworks. The validation process will be a relevant argument to convince the power stakeholders (DSOs, equipment manufacturers, energy authorities, policy makers, etc.) about the suitability of the most effective distributed solar PV solutions such as smart electricity supply. iDistributedPV will provide technical and regulatory recommendations, mainly focused on enhancing an effective and active renewable energy contribution and effective demand management to the security and reliability of the electricity networks: evolution from a power system with a centralized electricity generation to a new one that also includes production/demand units (prosumers) based on renewable energy and smart technologies.

WENDY aims at unravelling the factors triggering social acceptance of wind farms through an in-depth analysis at three dimensions: social sciences and humanities, environmental sciences and technological engineering. For that, the project will implement a series of local actions promoting the wider adoption of the project solutions, including guidelines, reports and handbooks which will be created to boost the understanding of wind farms decision making processes and enhance energy citizenship. This will be supported by the spatial multi-criteria WENDY toolbox. A tool able to identify the optimal turbines’ siting with the minimum environmental impact and highest social acceptance likelihood. All developed models, methods, guidelines and tools will be implemented within 10 wind projects spread across 4 countries. These have been selected considering: geography (north vs. south Europe), maturity stage (viability phase / planning phase / short-term operation phase / long-term operation phase); type of wind energy (onshore / offshore – floating, fixed-); and co-existence with other activities (agriculture, fisheries, energy communities). In these locations, outreach activities tailored to their specificities will be performed, creating the WENDY Knowledge Hubs which will incorporate citizens, local authorities, business owners and value chain actors of wind energy. WENDY Hubs will serve as a baseline for the WENDY Knowledge Exchange Platform, a forum that will be developed to facilitate the exchange of knowledge between decision makers and key stakeholders within wind farms planning processes. For a successful implementation of the project activities, all the value chain and the best-in-class expertise is involved in the project consortium including 9 partners from 6 European countries: 1 Large Company (EGP), 2 SMEs (WR, Q-PLAN), 1 University (CBS), 2 RTO (CIRCE, NINA), 1 Energy Community (MEC), 2 Non-profit organisations and associations (NOWC, APPA).

The main aim of the DRES2Market project is to develop a comprehensive and affordable approach to facilitate the effective participation of distributed generation based on renewable energies in the electricity markets, and enable to provide balancing and reserve services according to market criteria DRES2Market is focused on overcoming the existing barriers (technology and regulatory framework) for developing the integration of these technologies, based on the following issues: - The evaluation of the existing technologies (power generation, energy storage solutions, smart technologies, etc.) to design appropriate approaches for the effective integration of distributed generation in the electricity and ancillary services markets, propose the evolution of the technology to fulfil with the requirements to participate in these markets and recommend standards for these technologies. - The analysis of the existing grid codes and markets rules in the European markets to assess their capacity to enable the participation of variable renewable energy. - The identification of opportunities for the active participation of final consumers (based on distributed generation) in the penetration of these technologies, according to market criteria, proposing collaborative schemes. - The identification of arguments of the positive impact of these technologies, to obtain the social acceptance of these technologies. This initiative includes validation procedures based on computing and simulating processes based on real conditions. DRES2Market consortium includes the key players for the system integration of variable renewable energy: balance responsible parties; market operators, grid operator; providers of technology solutions; prosumers; retailers that can develop the aggregator role; renewable energy players; research and development (R&D) institutions and consultants with large expertise in renewable energy integration in electricity systems.

TRANSIT aims to provide sustainable training and reskilling programmes for current and future generations on a multidisciplinary approach in renewable energy and fuel technologies, identifying global and local challenges to realise the large deployment ambitions, covering European level and all different stakeholders' levels. Specifically, through support measures and activities TRANSIT will dedicate its resources and educational materials to target groups of policymakers, regulators, innovators, industry, trade associations, universities and local communities, covering the various sectorial strategies under the European Green Deal. Therefore, the TRANSIT framework establishes (i) success stories and practices that are catalogued, retained and promoted in terms of circularity and sustainable aspects, (ii) develop a hands-on training approach to revamp industry-academic curricula, and (iii) establish a web-enabled platform for the innovative and interactive multidisciplinary programme from educational campaigns to hands-on courses. Validation of TRANSIT resources, tools, and materials including challenges, competitions and awards will pass through rigorous quality assurance that ensures that each material also takes into consideration gender balance, societal impact, and employment competencies. TRANSIT developed framework will ensure post-project life is addressed through scalability and replicability, including the deployment of the programme in partners countries through appropriate stakeholders and open access practices.