Securing abundant, affordable, and clean energy remains a critical scientific challenge. Fortuitously, large shale formations occur within Europe. As the conventional gas production in Europe peaked in 2004, European shale gas could become a practical necessity for the next 50 years. However, the exploitation of shale gas remains challenging. Further, its environmental footprint is at present poorly quantified. Great care is needed to assess and pursue this energy resource in the safest possible way for the long-term future of Europe whilst protecting the European diverse natural environment. With this in mind, ShaleXenvironmenT assembled a multi-disciplinary academic team, with strong industrial connections. A comprehensive approach is proposed towards ensuring that the future development of shale gas in Europe will safeguard the public with the best environmental data suitable for governmental appraisal, and ultimately for encouraging industrial best practice. The primary objective is to assess the environmental footprint of shale gas exploitation in Europe in terms of water usage and contamination, induced seismicity, and fugitive emissions. Using synergistically experiments and modeling activities, ShaleXenvironmenT will achieve its objective via a fundamental understanding of rock-fluid interactions, fluid transport, and fracture initiation and propagation, via technological innovations obtained in collaboration with industry, and via improvements on characterization tools. ShaleXenvironmenT will maintain a transparent discussion with all stakeholders, including the public, and will suggest ideas for approaches on managing shale gas exploitation, impacts and risks in Europe, and eventually worldwide. The proposed research will bring economical benefits for consultancy companies, service industry, and oil and gas conglomerates. The realization of shale gas potential in Europe is expected to contribute clean energy for, e.g., the renaissance of the manufacturing industry.

Catalytic reactors account for production of 90% of chemicals we use in everyday life. To achieve the decarbonisation of European economy and comply with the 20-20-20 target, resource utilization and energy efficiency will play a major role in all industrial processes. The concept of PRINTCR3DIT is to employ 3D printing to boost process intensification in the chemical industries by adapting reactors and structured catalysts to the requirements of the reaction. This manufacturing technique is particularly useful in reactions where diffusion, mixing and/or heat transfer are limitations against reaching higher performance. The utilization of the concept of 3D printing will also reduce the resource utilization of reactor and catalyst manufacture, energy consumed (< 15%) and transportation. The rationale of using 3D printing will follow a generic and systematic structure for implementation. The methodology will be applied to three markets of fine chemicals, specialty chemicals and fertilizers, ranging from few tons to millions of tons of production per year. This demonstrates the enormous versatility of 3D printing for reactor and catalyst designs that cannot be improved with traditional building and design tools. For all these processes, the challenges to be solved are thermal management, innovative reactor design and flow distribution. These examples will provide realistic data in different markets to delineate business case scenarios with the options of new integrated plants or retrofitting for large-scale applications. Application of cutting-edge 3D printing to catalytic reactors will foster higher productivity, a more competitive industrial sector and higher value jobs in Europe - keeping leadership in such a challenging arena. PRINTCR3DIT is a joint effort between world-leading industries (4), innovative SMEs (4), R&D institutes (4) and a university that aim to accelerate deployment of a set of products to the market.

VIMMP facilitates and promotes the exchange between all materials modelling stakeholders for the benefit of increased innovation in European manufacturing industry. VIMMP will establish an open-source, user-friendly, powerful web-based marketplace linking beneficiaries from different manufacturing industry sectors with relevant materials modelling activities and resources. To enable a seamless and fully integrated environment, VIMMP is built on solid taxonomy and metadata foundations, including those centred on materials models, software tools, communities, translation expertise and training materials. VIMMP is a true marketplace, offering a substantial boost to all providers of tools and services; integrating modelling platforms based on Open Simulation Platform (OSP) standards that will be pursued in collaboration with the EMMC. Thus, any software owner can easily integrate models and certify codes to adhere to OSP standards. The Translator function will be supported by novel, collaborative tools that use metadata to combine models on an abstract logical level. OSP standards enable Translators and End User to build and deploy workflows quickly. VIMMP contributes novel avenues for coupling and linking of models, which will be validated in the context of three overlapping industry applications: personal goods, polymer nanocomposites and functional coatings. Data repositories relevant to modelling will be developed and integrated in VIMMP, including a novel input parameter repository for mesoscopic model, also materials properties and associated validation data. VIMMP will comprise a full set of education and training resources relevant for a wider range of manufacturing industry. VIMMP users will profit from lowering risk and upfront cost, greater speed and agility of deploying materials modelling and realising the wide range of demonstrated economic impacts.

The Aerosol, Clouds and Trace Gases Research Infrastructure (ACTRIS) is a pan-European research infrastructure producing high-quality data and information on short-lived atmospheric constituents and on the processes leading to the variability of these constituents in natural and controlled atmospheres. Different atmospheric processes are increasingly in the focus of many societal and environmental challenges, such as air quality, health, sustainability and climate change. ACTRIS brings essential information for understanding atmospheric processes and bio-geochemical interactions between the atmosphere and ecosystems. ACTRIS is composed of Observational and Exploratory Platforms, Topical Centres, Data Centre, and Head Office that is coordinating the ACTRIS activities. ACTRIS serves a vast community of users such as scientists, policy makers, private sector, funding organisations and educators. ACTRIS activity started almost 20 years ago, and currently more than 100 European partners from 22 countries are engaged in building the research infrastructure. ACTRIS was selected to the ESFRI roadmap in 2016 and was granted with EC preparatory phase project funding (ACTRIS PPP) for 2017-2019. Interim ACTRIS Council (IAC), representing the governmental representatives of 16 member countries and one observer country, have submitted the ACTRIS ERIC step 1 documents to EC in Feb 2019. IAC is aiming to establish ACTRIS ERIC in 2021. ACTRIS is entering the implementation phase in 2020. The ACTRIS implementation project, ACTRIS IMP, will take ACTRIS into a new level of maturity and will set the needed structures for the implementation actions, both at the national and European level. ACTRIS IMP builds on three main pillars: securing the long-term sustainability, implementing of ACTRIS functionalities, and positioning ACTRIS in the national, European and international science and innovation landscape. ACTRIS IMP will enable ACTRIS to respond to the users’ needs and requirements.