The rapidly changing nature of the New Psychoactive Substance (NPS) market and the overall large number of substances that need to be monitored have presented challenges for early warning activities in recent years. Since the number of illicit drug classes is growing exponentially over time, the current challenge is no longer to search substances during an investigation, but rather to provide a sort of preliminary identification of the substance as illicit, i.e., to tag it as such, especially when it is a new type of drug. Today several instruments equipped with up-to-date libraries allow for the rapid identification of drugs of abuse. However, this approach suffers from four main problems: 1) The instruments libraries are not updated regularly; 2) The instruments do not easily overcome the matrix effect; 3) NPSs are trafficked and sold in smaller doses, making their detection and identification more difficult; 4) Routine methods of analysis during forensic analysis are no longer effective in screening drugs of abuse, the parent drugs but also their metabolites, due to the lack of structural information and commercial reference materials. NARCOSIS (Non-tArgeted foRensic multidisCiplinary platfOrm for inveStigatIon of drug-related fatalitieS) will provide a set of features for fast, robust, and reliable multidisciplinary approach to harmonise forensic investigations by means of an up-to-date and updateable diagnostic platform with the following key features: 1) A set of selected orthogonal instruments operable both on-site and in laboratories (Raman/SERS, IR, HSI, HRMS) will be adapted to be used with the NARCOSIS platform; 2) Build a comparable and shareable (cross-organisation) reference spectra (meta-spectra) database for faster detection and identification of drugs of abuse; 3) Create an AI-assisted spectra management and integration toolkit for analytical measurements to support the EU Early Warning System to rapidly detect, assess and respond to NPS.

SCOoPE project will work directly with energy-intense agro-food industries to implement cross-cutting and collaborative energy management systems addressed to reduce their energy consumption, and will further spread this knowledge within technicians, businesses managers, and energy and agro-food institutions. The project SCOoPE aims at achieving the challenges of the topic EE 16-2014/2015. Regarding the use of cost-effective energy solutions, the project objective is to reduce energy consumption at a short term in a range between 10% and 15% directly in 81 businesses belonging to the agro-food target sectors of the project (namely crop drying, meat and poultry, dairy, and fruit and vegetables transformation). This reduction must be achieved without any decrease in the production capacity of the companies and maintaining correct socioeconomic and environmental conditions. In order to do that, the project will work with the uptake of specific and cross-cutting innovative technologies and techniques, which efficacy has been proven in other industrial sectors, different from agro-food sector, but that are not yet familiar to project’s target sectors. On the other hand, the project pursues larger savings in the medium term with new affordable energy solutions, specifically by developing the concept of “Collaborative Energy Management Systems”. It will take advantage of complementarities and synergies between analysed industrial sites with similar characteristics and will use them for the improvement of their joint energy efficiency. For this purpose, 6 pilot industrial clusters will be run in order to prove the improvements of total energy consumptions and its associated costs, achieved by using common procedures based on ISO 50.001 and supported by an specific software (Dashboard) developed by the project. All these experiences will be promoted to encourage target groups to reduce their energy consumption, following the example of the directly involved companies.

BIOMETHAVERSE (Demonstrating and Connecting Production Innovations in the BIOMETHAne uniVERSE) aims to diversify the technology basis for biomethane production in Europe, to increase its cost-effectiveness, and to contribute both to the uptake of biomethane technologies and to the priorities of the SET Plan Action 8. To this aim five innovative biomethane production pathways will be demonstrated in five European countries: France, Greece, Italy, Sweden, and Ukraine. The project is based on the following founding pillars: Demonstration of innovative biomethane pathways; Technology optimisation and upscaling by technoeconomic flowsheeting; Environmental and social sustainability assessment; Replicability, market penetration, support to planning decisions of other investors and project developers, policy recommendations to policy makers; Dissemination, exploitation and communication of project results. BIOMETHAVERSE relates, within the Work Program 2021-2022 on Climate, Energy and Mobility, to the Call “Sustainable, secure and competitive energy supply”, specifically to the topic HORIZON-CL5-2021-D3-03-16: Innovative biomethane production as an energy carrier and a fuel. The project production routes cover one or a combination of the following production pathways: thermochemical, biochemical, electrochemical, and biological. As a starting point, four demonstration plants use conventional anaerobic digestion (AD), and one uses conventional gasification. In the BIOMETHAVERSE demonstrators, CO2 effluents from AD or gasification and other intermediate products are combined with renewable hydrogen or renewable electricity directly to increase the overall biomethane yield. All demonstrated production routes go beyond conventional technologies, with a circular approach for energy and material, while aiming at reducing the overall biomethane production costs and increasing the biomethane production. The demonstrated technologies will reach TRL 6-7 at the end of the project.

The ECRIA project AMBITION aims to develop a long-term joint European Community Research and Innovation Agenda on the integration of biofuels production and surplus grid electricity valorisation. AMBITION brings together eight partners from eight different countries into a European wide lasting research partnership, which is closely linked to EERA Bioenergy. The current fragmentation in energy systems and an increasing share of intermittent energy ask for solutions providing integration and flexibility in the system. AMBITION targets the challenge of system flexibility by integrating (i.e. creating a bridge between) two forms of energy carriers, e.g. grid electricity and biofuels. Further, CO2 from current energy systems and industrial production can to be utilized as an alternative carbon source as an alternative to sequestration. The project targets a limited set of specific aspects (topics) of the integration challenge, which are in line with the priority areas identified in the SET plan Integrated Roadmap. Based on a short-term RIA, several key bottlenecks in biomass conversion technologies such as energy-efficient, low-temperature biomass pre-treatment, gasification and gas cleaning/conditioning to valorize lignin-rich biorefinery residue feedstock and syngas fermentation for the sustainable production of biofuels and chemicals are eliminated through transnational and integrated multidisciplinary research. AMBITION improves the overall material and energy efficiency of the conversion processes and simultaneously reduces capital and operation costs to facilitate implementation in an innovative and integrated European Energy system.

Water is a critical resource for the European society. Beside its main life function, freshwater also provides many other functions essential to our economy. Water challenges cannot be successfully tackled through the isolated effort of individual national research and innovation programmes. This ERA-NET cofund proposal is submitted in the name of the Joint Programming Initiative “Water Challenges for a Changing World”, and aims at contributing to tackle European water challenges through the development of transnational and trans-disciplinary research and innovation actions. WaterWorks2014 addresses the specific challenge of integrating the efforts and Strategic Agendas of many European Water Research and Innovation funding organizations. This ERA-NET cofund will implement a Call for proposals on “research and innovation developing technological solutions and services to support the implementation of EU water policy, in particular for water distribution and measurement, waste water treatment and reuse, desalination, floods and droughts etc.” This Call for proposals will be funded by 18 organizations from 16 countries, and will have a total budget of 15.2 million Euro. This total budget includes a cofund from the European Commission amounting to 5.0 million Euro. WaterWorks2014 will also perform additional activities contributing to Water JPI Strategy and Implementation. Activities contributing to strategy include the development of new versions of the Water JPI Strategic Agenda and the Implementation Plan. Activities contributing to implementation include sharing good practices on Water research and innovation funding and management, exploratory workshops, alignment of on-going projects and the monitoring and final evaluation of Calls without cofunding. WaterWorks2014 will benefit researchers, policy-makers, water authorities, utility operators, industry, farmers, and citizens by developing new solutions to water challenges.