The energy and building sector are vital to Europe’s environment and energy policies. In the current energy transition, the building sector is recognized as a cornerstone due to the possibility to easily adopt advanced control strategies and smart management systems. Thereby cost-effectively increasing buildings’ energy efficiency and flexibility, while improving building users’ comfort, productivity, and health. This cost-effective energy use reduction will render faster implementation of on-site and nearby renewable energy sources, facilitate demand electrification, hence reducing Europe’s energy dependencies. Achieving the building sector energy transition demands an improvement of the interoperability of European buildings with energy carriers and non-energy services. Buildings must play an active role in ensuring the reliability, resilience, and sustainability of the energy system, particularly in the face of evolving challenges such as climate change, resource constraints, and other threats (e.g., cybersecurity, geopolitical, etc.). Therefore, the aim of ENTRANCE is to enable smart-grid-ready and decarbonized buildings through the integration of energy efficiency, flexibility, on-site renewables, mobility, empowerment of end-users, and interoperability between buildings and district heating and electricity grids. The ambition of ENTRANCE is to develop and demonstrate solutions that promote building integration and active participation in the energy system and market through guaranteeing end-users’ comfort and empowerment while creating value for the economic actors of the energy landscape. Through four core principles based on integrated technology, digitalization, user engagement, and performance-driven economics, ENTRANCE solutions will be demonstrated in relevant environments. To generalize the solutions for different geographical regions, ENTRANCE includes demonstration sites from six different countries around Europe.

The offshore wind sector has experienced rapid growth in recent years, with new turbine technologies, increased sizes and construction locations further from the shore in deeper waters than ever before. A critical challenge for future developments is the lack of knowledge surrounding how to design foundations to support these turbines, with the safety, life-span, cost and environmental implications coming increasingly into question. To maintain Europe’s stance as a world-leader in offshore wind, Foundations foR Offshore wiNd TurbInES (FRONTIErS) DN has been designed to bring together research intensive universities and major industry stakeholders to train the next generation of graduates with the appropriate skills to tackle the emerging issues presenting as a barrier to continued development of the sector. 11 talented Doctoral Candidates (DCs) will undergo training via individual guided research projects, network-wide discipline-specific and transferrable training events, and local training at each host, over a 36-month PhD programme. DCs will receive training in innovation, communication, commercialisation and entrepreneurship as well as undertaking specific modules in business development to arm them with the requisite all-round skills to excel in academic or industry careers. A tailored dissemination strategy will govern outputs and ensure that the research reaches wider audiences, both scientific and public, through a variety of media. The secondment strategy is designed to expose DCs to both academic and industry environments to foster an appreciation for the requirements of each sector and to enable research translation. Where a DC’s research makes an appropriate contribution to its field of science, the candidate will be awarded a doctorate degree from one of four world-leading academic institutions partaking in the programme. FRONTIErS will create the next generation of high-skilled professionals, who will be in high-demand in this expanding sector.