The W2W project will produce and validate a comprehensive framework for multi-dimensional cascade valorisation of wood from C&D and furniture waste, consisting of four core components: 1) Advanced separation & sorting technologies: Adaptive Separation and Sorting system based on cascade valorisation thresholds, making use of human-robot collaboration and mixed reality technologies 2) Upcycling Processes and Technologies: mechanical, chemical, and bioremediation processes to recover wood or resources from waste and use them in new products which have the same quality as the ones produced by primary resources3) Digital Tools for Improving Circular Flows of Secondary Materials: LCA-based tool to predict and assess the impact of different cascade paths, Supply Chain Management Tool for the optimisation of upcycling of secondary materials, Digital Product Passport, and Digital Platform for circularity/upcycling information exchange.4) Supportive Framework in Policy, Market, and Skills: Framework for CDW Cascade Valorisation, Harmonised Waste Wood Classification Framework, skills development, contribution to standards and certification schemes, business models. W2W will demonstrate efficient and sustainable value chains in 3 Use Cases for the production of: wood without pollutants; biocomposite building materials; biopolymers; polyols; chemical detergents; and the recovery of nutrients, through the use of technologies and tools that allow the selection of optimal cascade paths for further uses of wood products and their materials.The W2W holistic approach will reduce the demand for virgin materials, reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills or incineration facilities, allow for the creation of new value-added products from waste materials, and support the transition towards a circular economy by promoting closed-loop systems where materials are continually repurposed and reused, extending their useful life.

agroBRIDGES aims to build bridges between producers and consumers, rebalancing farmers market position by empowering them with knowledge about new business and marketing models. The proposal will mobilise local farmers through Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs), focussing on decreasing intermediaries and their margin. Precisely, agroBRIDGES will follow a knowledge-based, holistic, systemic approach built on two pillars: (1) a multi-actor framework pursuing demand-driven innovation; (2) a combination of communication materials, training programs, events organisation and IT tools gathered in the agroBRIDGES Toolbox as the ultimate instrument that will provide practical support to producers, consumers, contracting authorities, distributors, academia, etc, improving farmers position in the value chain. Both regional and pan-European approaches will be considered along with the project, where 12 Beacon regions will be involved in the creation of this multi-actor framework, directly involving ca. 400 people in information collection, knowledge exchange, co-creation, co-development and validation of project outputs. Full EU roll-out, replication and training will be conducted, supported by a strong dissemination campaign and coordination with other EU projects and initiatives as SCAR-AKIS and EIP AGRI through a clustering plan. Main impact in the short term will be ca. 150 persons trained on topics related to food procurement and how to mobilise innovative agri-food supply chains and support local producers, while in the medium-, long-term it is expected a 5-8% increase of farms totally or partially involved in direct sales to consumers and an increase in farmers income for the value of the output ca. 35% average thanks the developed new SFSCs models. This way, agroBRIDGES will make an ambitious contribution to the Common Agricultural Policy unlocking the full potential of Europe’s inner wealth by placing producers as a cornerstone for boosting European agri-food sector.

Community energy sits high in the energy policy agenda as an inseparable part of the strategy towards a low-carbon EU economy. Sustainable biogas technologies have been extremely slow in catching up with community energy developments, failing to benefit from their undeniable potential. ISABEL aims to remove the obstacles and to promote community biogas in the EU by bringing out its societal relevance and by joining forces with a major revolutionary movement – Social Innovation. To achieve and sustain this transition, ISABEL employs modern marketing research to understand the needs and cultural diversities of the communities, fuses Social Innovation to reposition Biogas from an economic bio-fuel carrier to a social good, to come up with new community concepts and to build a stronger and wider community engagement in support of biogas. We zoom in on specific areas with diverse interest and we support communities on the ground to realize community biogas plans in coordination with all the stakeholders, slashing transaction overheads. We bring communities together to exchange and inspire each other as we carefully steer them towards quality sustainability and impact assessment principles. We zoom out to inform the policy world about what works and what does not, what should change and how we can scale-up, replicate and innovate in order to make investments more attractive. We envision a more innovative, better connected, less sensitive to policy and more transparent community biogas movement which will serve as a spring of ideas for other renewable energy technologies. But we start simple – we want more ideas, more and deeper public involvement, more responsible community biogas plans and more bold and fair policies; and we bring along a highly complementary team of practical minded people to do it.

The project IMPACT-SC5 aims to assess the impacts of the 87 funded RIAs and IAs, through a multilevel analysis, starting at project (participant) level, via portfolio, network and context analyses. It applies a rigorous methodology that enables to capture the various (intended and unintended) impacts of projects and groups of projects. Horizon 2020 contributes, via its focus on ‘Societal Challenges’ (SCs), to the ongoing paradigm change in Research and Innovation Policy. The pursued objectives are not only to generate economic growth and jobs, but to help resolve pressing socio-economic challenges, including those related to climate, environment, resource efficiency, and raw materials (SC5). The challenge orientation of H2020 implies monitoring the progress of the projects towards the achievement of the targeted objectives and impacts. The scientific, economic and societal/environmental performance of the 87 RIA and IA projects under the SC5 Work Programme 2014-15 will be measured by means of an extensive set of indicators. A portfolio analysis will complement the project-level analysis in order to determine how projects perform together in relation to different objectives. IMPACT-SC5 explores impact pathways to identify good practices and draw recommendations for policymakers and potential EU research funding beneficiaries to increase the impacts of future SC5 projects. Particular attention is paid to the broad and changing policy contexts to ensure a holistic approach for a better understanding of the performance (and the underlying factors) of the 87 projects. Throughout the project, stakeholder engagement will be strongly fostered. The methodology and findings (including the recommendation) will be validated with high-level experts and practitioners who will also be channels for dissemination. The methodology will be made available to the European Commission for its use in the ex-post evaluation of H2020 or future evaluation exercises.

INVITE envisages a well-connected European Open Innovation (OI) ecosystem, in which knowledge meaningfully flows across borders and is translated into marketable innovations, bringing increased socio-economic benefits to EU citizens. To this end, INVITE applies a multi-stakeholder approach to co-design, pilot and demonstrate in diverse real-life settings demand-driven mechanisms, skill-sets and measures in order to facilitate OI. An innovation voucher scheme will stimulate interactions between the demand and the supply of knowledge via an unconventional yet highly flexible way, namely virtual human capital mobility. At the same time, a highly interactive and flexible e-learning intervention will empower EU businesses with the skill-sets to tap into EU’s knowledge-base and turn it into value, while a public-private co-investment scheme will leverage small amounts of public funds to increase participation of private investors in open and collaborative models of innovation. All pilots will integrate OI support services that will appropriately scale to the needs and capabilities of each case and will be facilitated through open ICT tools. Along the process a participatory co-evaluation framework will keep track of the pilots’ performance and fuel iterative, user-driven refinements to generate results ready for scale up and replication. Dedicated business planning exercises in line with a tailored IPR strategy will pave the way for the launch of a pan-European service platform we dub as Open Innovation Lab, to the market, synergising with existing OI platforms and service offers to co-create value for the European OI ecosystem. To this end, INVITE brings together a complementary and multi-disciplinary consortium, comprised of key players within the OI market including leading platform and service providers, international and regional support networks, ICT solution providers as well as private investor networks and pioneering in OI regional development agencies.