We are currently seeing a deceleration of renewable energy growth in Europe. This is partly attributed to the challenges for financing renewable energy projects. Reduced access to conventional financing options over the past few years has triggered innovative financing schemes to emerge, with crowdfunding attracting a lot of attention. CrowdFundRES recognises the vast potential of crowdfunding for financing renewable energy projects. The project has been developed for and in cooperation with the three target groups: 1) Renewable energy project developers whose access to financing is getting more challenging 2) The part of the public that has an interest in investing even very small amounts of their savings in renewable energy projects 3) Crowdfunding platforms who act as intermediaries facilitating the financial transaction between the public and the project developers. The overall objective of the proposed project is to contribute to the acceleration of the renewable energy growth in Europe by unleashing the potential of crowdfunding for financing renewable energy projects. In order to achieve this, the work has been structured for achieving the following objectives: 1. Gain a deep understanding of the public’s perception of crowdfunding 2. Analyse the challenges faced by the application of crowdfunding for renewable energy projects in Europe 3. Develop guidelines that support easier, more effective and wider accepted practices in crowdfunding renewable energy projects 4. Apply the guidelines and review them based on practical experience 5. Improve the market and regulatory framework 6. Promote the crowdfunding concept and its advantages among those who could contribute or raise funds

Currently within the EU’s Earth Observation (EO) monitoring framework, there is a need for low-cost methods for acquiring high quality in-situ data to create accurate and well-validated environmental monitoring products. The aim of the LandSense project is to build a far reaching citizen observatory for Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) monitoring that will also function as a technology innovation marketplace. LandSense will deploy advanced tools, services and resources to mobilize and engage citizens to collect in-situ observations (i.e. ground-based data and visual interpretations of EO imagery). Integrating these citizen-driven in-situ data collections with established authoritative and open access data sources will help reduce costs, extend GEOSS and Copernicus capacities, and support comprehensive environmental monitoring systems. New LandSense services (LandSense Campaigner, FarmLand Support, Change Detector and Quality Assurance & Control) will be deployed in three demonstration cases that will address critical LULC issues in the areas of urbanization, agricultural land use and forest/habitat monitoring. Policy-relevant campaigns will be implemented in close collaboration with multiple stakeholders to ensure that citizen observations contribute to EU-wide environmental governance and decision-making. There will be numerous pathways to citizen empowerment via the LandSense Engagement Platform, i.e. tools for discussion, online voting collaborative mapping, as well as events linked to various campaigns involving public consultation. Simultaneously, to improve Europe’s role in the business of in-situ monitoring, LandSense will create sustainable business models to support market uptake and innovation of its novel added-value products and services.

Air pollution is the environmental topic that European citizens worry about most (Eurobarometer 2013). It puts considerable damage to health, agriculture and our natural environment. Despite these facts, the readiness and power of European citizens to take actions themselves is limited. The drivers of the CAPTOR project are three large civil society organizations. Being the interface between ministries for environmental issues, national and local political decision makers and the citizens, their experience evidences that the provision of data and information on air pollution to citizens in top-down and passive ways, as it happens today, is not sufficient to engage a critical mass of participating citizens required to support transitions in the systems of production and consumption that are the root cause of air pollution. CAPTOR combines the concepts of citizen science, collaborative learning and environmental grassroots activism to leverage the collective intelligence of existing networks of local communities, allowing them to understand reasons and consequences of air pollution; to stimulate debate; to address authorities with scientific valuable, robust data from citizens’ network of monitoring stations; and to transform this discussion into solutions. It runs three big pilots in Austria, Italy and Spain, driven by grassroots activists and local communities where citizens will engage in the project on different levels to address their concerns. The consortium includes a balanced group of multidisciplinary partners, including: institutions with recognised experience in ICT technologies, and in environmental and social sciences; one of the largest community networks in the world; and 3 NGOs with experience in grass root environmental activism and a strong links in the territory. The project has a large impact capacity, as it is reflected by the fact that more than 82 stakeholders from 21 European countries have already shown interest in the proposal results.