ClimateSmartAdvisors is a pan-European multi-actor network covering 27 countries. Its aim is to boost the EU agricultural advisory community, leading to an acceleration of the adoption of climate smart (CS) farming practices by the wider farming community within and across EU AKISs. To reach this objective, ClimateSmartAdvisors focuses on the crucial role of advisors in the development and dissemination of CS innovations and practices. The project will organize activities focusing on strengthening the advisors’ capacity in providing CS advice and boosting the advisors’ role in the transition towards CS farming through their involvement in innovation projects, CS-AKIS, and EU projects and initiatives. A number of complementary activities are developed to strengthen the CS advisory capacity of the EU advisory community: 1) an EU-wide network of 260 advisory Communities of Practice (CoP) to support the development of 1500 advisors will form the core of CS knowledge exchange; 2) 140 advisors will receive expert training on selected topics, relevant for their context and for facilitating a CoP; 3) CoPs will internationally exchange knowledge on 12 thematic areas; 4) a knowledge repository will provide advisors with CS tools, practices and approaches developed in the ClimateFarmDemo project and further expanded in ClimateSmartAdvisors, 5) monitoring, evaluation and learning activities will capitalize lessons learned in and outside the project. Activities to boost the advisors role in the CS transition include: 1) connecting to local and EU (multi-actor innovation) projects, initiatives, AKIS actors, and policy makers to clarify and address joint needs, challenges and lessons learned, 2) the set-up of Co-Design Innovation Experiments to learn on how to strengthen the advisors’ role in innovation processes. Finally, to accelerate the wide spread of results, an ambitious dissemination, exploitation and communication strategy will be deployed at EU and national levels.

SolAqua will increase the share of renewable energy in Europe by facilitating market uptake of solar irrigation (SI). By combining photovoltaic and hydraulic technology with high efficiency irrigation, SI can provide energy for irrigation with 0 emissions and at a cost of up to 70% lower than existing fossil-fuel based solutions. The potential of SI to change the energy model of European farming is huge as irrigation demands large amounts of energy for pumping water to crops. Alongside a €4 bn energy bill, the current fossil-fuel based energy model of irrigation also has a high environmental cost; it produces 16 million tons of CO2 every year, approximately 15% of the EU’s total CO2 emissions from agriculture. Nevertheless, despite its potential benefits, market uptake of SI is being prevented by a number of non-technological barriers. Also, there is a lack of awareness and skills regarding SI among irrigators and other stakeholders, such as local SMEs and public authorities. SolAqua is the answer from a coalition of relevant stakeholders to overcome this situation. In a first stage, SolAqua will produce 7 key enabling materials and tools needed for SI market uptake but which are currently missing, such as quality standards and economic and environmental assessment methodologies. In a second stage, SolAqua will carry out a far-reaching dissemination and communication plan in order to attract more than 300,000 stakeholders in Europe and North Africa to SI in general and, in particular, to SolAqua’s exploitation plan. This exploitation plan will allow for the triggering a well-functioning SI market by producing a joint SI promotion of at least 100 MW (more than €120 M in investments) which will act as a flagship for the solution. Also, in order to support SI investments, the public authorities within SolAqua will produce a SI-suited supporting instrument and will allow for its replication throughout Europe.