The Steel Industry today is heavily affected by the Twin Transformation (digital and green).Confronted with constant and rapid changes (e.g. Industry 4.0 applications) and to remaincompetitive the industry must facilitate the development of a highly qualified, specialised and multiskilled workforce. Improving the capacity of the industry to forecast, identify and anticipate skill needs is therefore crucial and a precondition to implement and unfold the potential of new technologies.ESSA is aiming at an accepted, integrated and sustainable implemented European Steel Skills Alliance and Strategy (ESSA Blueprint) with an action plan (roadmap) for proactive and industry driven skills adjustment, reflective and anticipating governance• run by main European and national stakeholders, used by steel companies and trainingproviders, supported by social partners• with an outreach to the steel member states and VET systems (in collaboration with other sectoral industry Blueprints).ESSA is set up as an iterative Social Innovation Process with 41 partners so far (associations, companies, training providers, research organisations, social partner), combining technological and social innovation, ensuring integration of relevant stakeholders, and mutual development and learning by integrating different perspectives and target groups. ESSA is conducted by the steel industry for the steel industry, integrating new elements for skills adjustment in already existing structures.Based on a technological foresight, industry skills requirements and VET system support aPrototype of the ESSA Blueprint was outlined comprising as core elements:• European Steel Technology and Skills Foresight Observatory (ESSA ETF) (demand side)• Online Training Ecosystem (ESSA OTS) and planned Regional Training Ecosystems (ESSARTS) (supply side).The steelHub is the centre of ESSA OTS, integrating associations, companies, Blueprints, VET systems, European tools, and learners perspectives.

Industrial symbiosis (IS) has gain great attention in the last years due to its high potential for energy and resources savings. However, there is still a need for enhancing the knowledge base for IS in Europe, especially in what regards to the implementation and operation phases, which must be supported by harmonised frameworks and data reporting structures that ensure data accuracy and comparability in existing and new IS initiatives. Under this framework, CORALIS has been designed as a demonstration project for the generation of real experiences on the deployment of IS solutions and the overcoming of the barriers faced by these initiatives. In order to properly address this complex issue, CORALIS will address three factors (technical, managerial and economical) that will set the basis for the definition of the IS readiness level, a useful indicator establishing the feasibility of the overall IS initiative. In addition to specific developments on each of these factors, CORALIS will provide a harmonised framework for the monitoring of results and evaluation of their impact from a life cycle perspective. This impact assessment methodology will be implemented into a virtual assessment platform that will support the operation of the involved industrial parks. The overall approach of CORALIS will be demonstrated in a total of 3 industrial parks, each of them supported by an IS facilitator, a neutral actor in charge of guiding the IS initiative and exploiting its full potential. Moreover, 3 additional industrial parks will follow the project results in order to replicate them by implementing additional IS initiatives after the project’s end. Further replication is expected by gathering the project results in CORALIS Handbook for supporting the implementation of IS, by providing recommendations on regulation and standardization and by establishing a continuous dialogue with main European stakeholders following an ambitious dissemination and exploitation strategy.

The main objective of the project is to develop solutions to recover the waste heat produced in energetic intensive processes of industrial sectors such as cement, glass, steelmaking and petrochemical and transform it into useful energy. These solutions will be designed after an evaluation of the energetic situation of these four industries and will deal with the development of Waste Heat Recovery Systems (WHRS) based on the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) technology. This technology is able to recover and transform the thermal energy of the flue gases of EII into electric power for internal or external use. Furthermore, a WHRS will be developed and tested to recover and transform the thermal energy of the flue gases of EII into mechanical energy for internal use (compressors). In order to reach this objective several challenging innovative aspects will have to be approached by the consortium. It is planned to design and develop a multisectorial direct heat exchanger to transfer heat directly from the flue gases to the organic fluid of the ORC system and to develop new heat conductor and anticorrosive materials to be used in parts of the heat exchanger in contact with the flue gases. These aspects will be completed by the design and modelling of a new integrated monitoring and control system for the addressed sectors. The consortium consists of 8 partners from 4 European countries. They cover several relevant sectors of the energy intensive industry, namely cement, steel, glass and petrochemical sectors. The industrial involvement in the project is significant and the project addresses the implementation of a full demonstration of the WHRS for electrical energy generation in one of the industrial partners (CEMENTI ROSSI) and a semi-validation of the WHRS for air compressors energy supply system at pilot scale.

BAMBOO aims at developing new technologies addressing energy and resource efficiency challenges in 4 intensive industries (steel, petrochemical, minerals and pulp and paper). BAMBOO will scale up promising technologies to be adapted, tested and validated under real production conditions focus on three main innovation pillars: waste heat recovery, electrical flexibility and waste streams valorisation. These technologies include industrial heat pumps, Organic Rankine Cycles, combustion monitoring and control devices, improved burners and hybrid processes using energy from different carriers (waste heat, steam and electricity) for upgrading solid biofuels. These activities will be supported by quantitative Life Cycle Assessments. In order to maximize their application and impact to plant level, flexibility measures will be implemented in each demo case towards energy neutrality and joined in a horizontal decision support system for flexibility management. This tool will analyse, digest and interchange information from both, the process parameters and the energy market, including the BAMBOO solutions. As a result, the operation of the plants will be improved in terms of energy and raw materials consumption, and will lay the foundation of new approaches in the energy market. BAMBOO will empower intensive industries to take better decisions to become more competitive in the use of natural resources in a broader context, in the spirit of facilitating the use of larger variability and quantity of RES. BAMBOO consortium comprises strong industrial participation; 6 large companies as final users and 3 SMEs as technology providers, working with experienced RTOs and supporting entities. The private investment associated to BAMBOO is over 7M€ along the execution of the project. Lastly, the transferability potential of BAMBOO is extremely relevant as targeted process and plant improvements offer very high potential applications in other intensive industries.

The vision of COCOP is that complex process-industry plants are optimally run by operators with the guidance of a coordinating, real-time optimisation system. COCOP will strengthen the global position of the European process industry, which represents 20 per cent of the European manufacturing base with around 450,000 companies generating €1.6 billion in turnover and 6.8 million jobs. The project’s objective is to enable plant-wide monitoring and control by using the model-based, predictive, coordinating optimisation concept in integration with plant’s automation systems. This ambitious approach will be developed and verified in co-operation of European universities, research institutes and industry. The Consortium comprises two universities, three research organisations, the leading copper-plant technology provider, two large companies from the process industry (steel and special chemicals) and four SMEs providing automation solutions. Technical objective is to define, design and implement a concept that integrates existing industrial control systems with efficient data management and optimisation methods and provides means to monitor and control large industrial production processes. The plant-wide monitoring and control comprehend computationally intensive data analysis and large scale optimisation. The social objective is to improve operator plant-wide awareness and reduce mental workload. COCOP will liaise with standardisation bodies (automation) to ensure a sustained impact of the project’s results. Commercialisation of the solution by its process-automation industry partners will allow plant operators to approach optimal production and result in reduced energy and resource consumption, and decreased on-site material handling time and greenhouse gas emissions.