AI-EFFECT will establish a European Testing Experimentation Facility (TEF) for developing, testing, and validating AI applications in the energy sector. It will be distributed across nodes, virtually connecting existing European facilities. The solution includes a digital platform leveraging European building blocks for interoperability, flexibility, and scalability. AI-EFFECT aims to be a central hub for testing energy sector AI algorithms, fostering collaboration across utilities, industry, academia, and regulatory authorities. Resilience is ensured through a decentralized design, aligning with the EU Energy Data Spaces framework. The project involves developing 4 use cases/nodes addressing key energy challenges, focusing on district heating, transmission congestion management, DERs integration, and energy communities. The framework involves utilities proposing challenges, vendors developing algorithms, and researchers contributing solutions. Each use case has evaluation criteria, baselines, and benchmarks. AI certification procedures, including interpretability and verification, will be implemented, and the evaluation process will be automated. Benchmarks and certifications are publicly available, encouraging open-source contributions. The project breaks sector barriers, leveraging existing infrastructures and technologies for cross-sectoral collaboration. The platform enforces policies for data quality, integrity, and privacy, promoting controlled data sharing and collaboration. Secure APIs ensure controlled interactions, including risk and security assessments. The consortium explores certification, standardization, and quality requirements in line with the EU AI Act. Governance and business models for the enduring AI-EFFECT will be examined, considering the EU AI Act. The consortium aims to make AI-EFFECT a sustained business beyond initial funding, seeking input from members, other TEFs, and regulatory authorities for the preferred model.

The overall aim of the Ammonia2-4 project is to demonstrate at full scale two types of dual fuel marine engines running on ammonia as main fuel: (i) a four-stroke and (ii) a two-stroke engine. The proposed four-stroke innovation is a newbuild 10MW engine to be demonstrated in lab conditions closely mimicking real-life operations in ambient conditions. The proposed two-stroke innovation is a medium-pressure ammonia fuel injection platform that can be retrofitted onto any two-stroke marine engine available in the market today. It will be demonstrated in the project at two stages: a lab demonstration followed by retrofitting onto a container vessel of the alpha customer MSC. Both engine innovations are expected to result in at least 80% less GHG emissions (including nitrous oxide emissions), NOx emissions below IMO Tier III regulations and a negligible ammonia slip below 10ppm. By demonstrating both engine types at full scale the project partners are aiming for commercial exploitation of the project results towards more than 90% of the maritime intercontinental transport in terms of gross tonnage, including retrofits and newbuilds to enter the fleet within the next ten years. It is expected that both Ammonia2-4 innovations will lead to an annual reduction of CO2 emitted by deep sea vessels calling at EU ports by 2.3 million tons, and reduce the emissions of harmful pollutants such as SOx by 15 tons annually. The project will go beyond purely technological developments and investigate a number of non-technical aspects crucial for a successful uptake of ammonia as marine fuel: health & safety, ammonia supply infrastructure, crew training & acceptance, but also novel standardisation pathways for regulating emissions from ammonia marine engines.