Energy retrofitting of post-World War II private multifamily residential buildings has been identified as a great challenge across Europe. Lack of adequate investment schemes, misalignment between residents' needs and grants and loans' design, complex governance and management, and fragmented demand are hindering the great energy saving potential captured in this sector, especially in South Europe, where fragmented property structure and longer return periods in energy efficiency investments complicate reaching the necessary agreements to retrofit. To tackle this complex challenge, AGREE aims at triggering investments in energy efficient retrofitting of private multifamily residential building estates through the development and deployment of innovative and replicable mechanisms for: 1) Demand activation and aggregation: based on an integrated approach to retrofitting that includes energy efficiency and other drivers such as improved habitability and accessibility, and benefitting from cost-effective energy retrofitting by aggregation of demand of similar building types, built at the same time and inhabited by similar populations. 2) Specific financing solution based on demand segmentation and tailored combination of grants and loans through the activation of a specific Retrofitting Fund led by the Basque Government in concertation with the private finance community, to reach traditionally excluded populations and unlock energy retrofitting in multi-ownership buildings. 3) Improved governance, ensuring residents, finance community and other relevant stakeholders' engagement along the process, as well as multilevel coordination to ensure effective policy design and implementation. Led by the Basque Government, the AGREE consortium and relevant stakeholders will co-design and implement an innovative and replicable Deployment Package to retrofit multifamily building estates dating from 1940-80 in 3 pilot cases in the Basque Country, mobilizing an investment of about 8.5M€

The joint and cross-borderPOSIDON pre-commercial public procurement has been a pivotal force in transforming a highly fragmented and innovation-averse sector—environmental remediation of brownfields. Brownfields, sites with limited territorial availability, represent a growing challenge in Europe, where land has become a scarce and valuable resource. The need for sustainable development has intensified the urgency of recovering and reusing these contaminated areas. POSIDON's procurement strategy addresses this by aligning with sustainable growth goals, focusing on in-situ soil decontamination solutions for complex, highly polluted sites. POSIDON PCP is distinguished by its innovative procurement approach, driving the development of breakthrough solutions in areas where no commercially viable options previously existed. Five leading public procurer launched a competitive call for tender to address the decontamination of brownfields polluted by petroleum hydrocarbons and heavy metals. Two cutting-edge technologies—"Soil-Omic with BIOflushing " and "ERASE"—were selected for pilot testing based on their cost-effectiveness and potential to disrupt the market. These technologies represent a leap forward in environmental remediation, particularly for brownfield where traditional technologies have long application times and high costs. The in-situ approaches were tested in Italy and Spain, ensuring their readiness for large-scale application. This PCP initiative has not only fostered the development of these innovative technologies but has also prepared the ground for widespread adoption and market leadership in the European soil decontamination sector. By aggregating demand across borders and ensuring the harmonization of innovation goals, POSIDON exemplifies a transformative shift toward buying innovation process itself, marking a new era in brownfield remediation.

POSIDON gathers 5 European procurers facing similar problems in the sites they manage, affected by analogous pollutants (2 front-runners-Trieste, IT and Bilbao, ES-and 3 observers - Spaque, BE; Vitoria Gasteiz, ES; Baja do Tejo, PT), leveraging public demand to identify fit-for-purpose and cost-effective innovative and sustainable solutions to soil contamination. The common challenge faced by the buyers’ group is identifying a new, life-cycle cost-effective technology for soil and groundwater remediation, capable of decontaminating heterogeneous anthropic soils in brownfields with a mixture of industrial waste (blast furnace slags, construction & demolition waste, filling soils polluted by petroleum hydrocarbons) and soils consisting of clays and sands of marine origin, highly polluted by petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs and PAHs) and heavy metals (arsenic and lead). Studies on the state of the art, patent analysis, foresight scanning and early market engagement meetings, show that no available technology can meet all identified needs, thus appropriate remediation technologies cannot be acquired through traditional off-the-shelf procurement.With PCP, procurers aim to achieve ambitious improvements in terms of quality and effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of new technology to bring to the market. R&D will be split into three phases: solution design, prototyping, original development and testing of 2 prototypes. Evaluations after each phase progressively identify solutions offering the best value for money. This phased approach allows successful contractors to improve their offers for the next phase based on feedback from procurers. POSIDON intends to create a critical mass through the consolidation of a pan-European network of procurers who, sharing their needs and efforts, can enable the development - through PCP - and subsequent deployment - through a PPI - of novel technologies aimed to cover bigger market challenges in areas of common European interest

Europe generates around 3 billion tonnes of waste yearly, which is expected to grow further. Despite the introduction of innovative waste and recycling technologies, market uptake varies drastically amongst the 27 Member States. New-InnoNet is the new stakeholder platform initiative by 12 European consortium members active as entrepreneurs, researchers and policy makers. These recognise that in order to reach a European near zero waste economy, all value chain stakeholders must cooperate, exchange generated knowledge, insights and hands-on experience and enforce changes to the value chain structure together. Previous initiatives were unable to achieve actual, large scale results towards a sustainable growth of the European economy. The reason is that they either focussed on a specific waste area or they lacked the involvement of the competent industries. This project includes various waste value chains which enable exchange of information and technology transfer from one chain to another. In addition, the consortium’s network includes over 2000 relevant industrial stakeholders and several already expressed their interest in this new stakeholder platform, its goals and actions. During the project, key stakeholders will be mobilised to participate in the platform and road mapping workshops, as only an active involvement of industrial organisations will lead to the desired changes in the structure of the value chain. The many letters of support show the consortium's strength in mobilising stakeholders. NEW_InnoNet’s main objective is to mobilise stakeholders towards building a circular economy by developing and reinforcing solid foundations for building the European Near-Zero Waste Platform through: 1. Set-up and maintain near zero waste stakeholder platform 2. Analyse selected waste streams and develop innovation roadmaps per waste stream 3. Develop an integrated near zero waste strategic research and innovation agenda 4. Stakeholder mobilisation and interaction

"The digital transformation is one of the major challenges for companies, society and the education system, which requires new forms of management. Due to disruptive elements and jump innovations, projects are a major organisational pattern for the digital transformation. The consortium of the Knowledge Alliance ""Projects for the Digital Transformation"" is building a community, training and knowledge cluster of universities, companies and other partners that will provide the required competences for project management for the digital transformations. Central to this are the international, intercultural and interdisciplinary competencies that are indispensable in a project. The consortium is focusing on a common competence model for the digital transformation. It is used to develop target group-specific courses which are made available as Open Educational Resources (OER). Moreover, competence development paths must be defined and tailored to the target persons in order to build up competence. They will be created through joint projects, workshops, summer schools, case studies and industry internships in internationally mixed teams. The concept of a cross-border virtual Master and PhD School will be linked to the corporate training programmes of enterprises. Training results and practical elements can be accumulated into academic degrees and academic offers become usable and certifiable in a professional environment. The development of standards, content and learning materials is carried out by joint communities of practice with university and company experts. The co-production approach leads to a sustainable commitment of all partners. A special focus is on the development of an agile start-up culture by involving relevant companies and associations and addressing the skills required for start-ups in the field of digitization. A digital communication concept will position the Knowledge Alliance and disseminate the results in the sense of a blueprint."