The 75% of the EU building stock is energy inefficient. Buildings hold a large untapped potential for renewables and energy efficiency in order to decarbonise the EU economy, to ensure security of supply and to provide cost savings to EU households and businesses alike. In this context, Shallow Geothermal Energy Systems (SGES) are a stable, reliable and renewable energy source with some key features compared to many other RES: being available everywhere and being capable of providing not only heating, but also cooling with unparalleled efficiency. Amongst SGES, closed loop systems with vertical Borehole Heat Exchangers enjoy the widest deployment in the EU where the total installed number of GSHP units amounts nowadays to about 1,4 million, representing an installed capacity of about 16.500 MWth. Against this background, there is still a need to remove market barriers and gain competitiveness, but also to develop the next generation of geothermal systems with new materials for penetrating further the market of building construction and renovation. Also the area of District Heating and Cooling needs improved heating and cooling storage technologies which could largely benefit from enhanced Underground Thermal Energy Storage (UTES) technologies. By a smart combination of different material solutions under the umbrella of sophisticated engineering, optimization, testing and on-site validation, GEOCOND will develop solutions to increase the thermal performance of the different subsystems configuring an SGES and UTES. An overall cost reduction of about 25% is the overall aim, leading to a substantial gain in competitiveness. GEOCOND, with a unique consortium of Companies and leading Reseach Institutions in the area of SGES and Materials, will focus on four key development areas in a synergeic and system-wide approach: development of new pipe materials, advanced grouting additives and concepts, advanced Phase Change Materials and system-wide simulation and optimization.

HyperCOG project “HYPERCONNECTED ARCHITECTURE FOR HIGH COGNITIVE PRODUCTION PLANTS” addresses the full digital transformation of the process industry and cognitive process production plants through an innovative Industrial Cyber-Physical System (ICPS). It is based on commercially available advanced technologies, that will enable the development of a hyper-connected network of digital nodes. The nodes can catch outstanding streams of data in real-time, which together with the high computing capabilities available nowadays, provide sensing, knowledge and cognitive reasoning to the industrial business. Furthermore, HyperCOG is deeply grounded in the last advances in Artificial Intelligence such as modelling for twin factories, decision-support systems for human-machine interaction and augmented reality for industrial processes visualization. It pursues self-learning from the process in order to deal with the typical dynamic fluctuations of the industrial processes and global optimization. The objective is to increase the production performance while reducing the environmental impact by reducing the energy consumption and the CO2 emissions thereof. Society will get profit of this project not only throughout the environmental impact, but through the lifelong learning of workers and vocational training for digitisation, and the available training modules for youth at schools such as ESTIA technological institute or U-PEC University. The breaking-edge system proposed in HyperCOG project will be validated on the productivity and environmental impacts, replicability and usability aspects on three use cases belonging to the SPIRE scope such us SIDENOR (steel making), CIMSA (cement), and SOLVAY (chemical) use cases.

The FORGE project has been specified as necessary by our energy-intensive industrial members, who, in order to intensify and update their future processes, need to improve equipment capability to withstand corrosion, erosion and brittle failures from gas collection and kiln operations, to maintain the equipment’s up-time and production efficiency. Current materials used in these exceptionally harsh environments, (and the corresponding design models) are not capable of robustly resisting degradation, leading to the constant need to inspect and repair damage. The FORGE project will train a machine-learning model to guide high-throughput experiments, to develop novel high performance coatings of targeted “Compositionally Complex Alloys" and Ceramic counterparts, to be applied to the key specified vulnerable process stages (eg CO2 capture and waste heat recovery pipework, heat exchangers, kiln refractories) in response to the specific degradation forces we find at each point. We will also capture the underlying principles of the material resistance, to proactively design the equipment for performance while minimising overall capex costs from these new alloys. The FORGE consortium has industrial user members from steel, cement, aluminium and ceramic industries and specialist materials, to ensure the project's focus on real-world issues, coupled with world-leading experience in the development of materials, protective coatings and their application to harsh environments. In addition to developing the new coating materials and techniques, we also aim to provide a new overarching set of design paradigms and generate an underpinning Knowledge Based System to inform this and future work in other energy intensive industries.

ICEBERG will make significant advances in the uptake of the circular economy in the building industry through the development of innovative circular reverse logistics’ tools and high-value secondary raw materials production technologies to establish market confidence and acceptability of recycled End-of-Life building materials (EBM). ICEBERG aims to design, develop, demonstrate and validate advanced technologies for the production of high-purity secondary raw materials (>92%w) through 6 circular case studies (CCS) across Europe, covering circularity of wood, concrete, mixed aggregate, plasterboard, glass, polymeric insulating foams and inorganic superinsulation materials. ICEBERG will generate cross-cutting integrated smart solutions that encompass three innovative circular reverse logistics’ strategies: an upgraded BIM-aided-Smart Demolition tool; a novel digital EBM traceability platform; and Radio Frequency and QR based identification system. ICEBERG will develop novel technologies for the recovery of EBM, which include: hyperspectral imaging (HSI), machine-learning software and robotic manipulators to increase sorting efficiency of mixed aggregates; an integrated crushing, sorting and cleaning optimized system and fast pyrolysis and purification processes for wood fractions; thermal attrition mobile unit integrated with LIBS and carbonation for concrete; hydrocyclone combined with HSI sorting and acid purification to increase the purity of recycled plasterboard; a combined process of purification and solvolysis for polymeric insulating foams; advanced hydrothermal and supercritical based processing of glass and silica containing waste. Circular design solutions for greater circularity of EBM and production of innovative circular building products with high purity and recycled content (30% - 100%) will be also implemented. ICEBERG will generate in the mid-term an economic benefit of 1758 M€ and 6265 new jobs by 2030.