ASSET´s goal is twofold: first, to create a sustainable and scalable ecosystem including all energy transition and education stakeholders: a) Companies from the energy sector, b) Universities and training actors, c) Authorities and policy makers and d) Society so as to enable a) continuous bottom up creation of research, innovation and educational (RIE) services and b) capacity pooling. By “service” we mean any research, innovation and educational relevant service that can be developed by the educational actors and delivered to the energy sector businesses and society at large. ASSET will also involve actors that can contribute to fuel interdisciplinary research combining SSH disciplines and capable of reaching out to the society to create the new generation of energy-sensitive citizens that are part of the energy transition mission. And second, to deliver the framework and means for continuous collaborative definition of the knowledge-competencies-skills required for the energy transition and for continuous resource pooling to efficiently educate/train large numbers of people in diverse and interdisciplinary topics and carry out research and innovation activities. The implementation of the ASSET approach will take place in 3 phases: 1) Ecosystem set-up with relevant actors to identify the knowledge, skill and competencies gaps in the addressed fields in order to design appropriate RIE services to close the gap. 2) RIE service development: Educational actors, based on the specifications of KSC gaps and on the results of the ASSET SSH research, will define the services (educational and research programme) that meet the specified needs. 3) Evaluation: ASSET delivers the developed RIE services to the targeted actors across EU universities, across companies from the energy sector and across EU societies. The aim is to collect feedback so as a) to refine ASSET offerings and b) define concrete ASSET sustainability plans

Solar power generates nearly 4% (and still growing) of Europe’s electricity demand. In 2021, the 200 GW of capacity installed in Europe will result in saving of 219 million CO2 tons/year. By 2030, 8 mill tons of PV panels are expected. Resource efficiency is a critical success factor for the solar power sustainable growth. Performance-based, third-party ownership Product-Service System (PSS) has been widely seen as a key circular economic model to stimulate resource efficiency and reduce waste generation. CIRCUSOL aims to establish solar power as a spearhead sector to demonstrate a path driven by PSS business models towards a circular economy in Europe. Through a co-creative approach with end-users and the entire value chain, CIRCUSOL will develop two main blocks of a circular PSS model: circular product management with re-use/refurbish/remanufacture (“second-life”) paths in addition to recycling, and value-added new product-services for residential, commercial and utility end-users. Five large-scale, real-life demonstrators will be set up in these 3 market segments, in 3 European countries (FR, BE and CH) to validate market acceptance, business viability and resource efficiency benefits. CIRCUSOL will deliver tangible innovation for the solar power industry with market-validated PSS business models, 2nd-life PV/battery labelling/certification protocols and cost/application analysis, and an info-sharing ICT platform. The results will be exploited in FR, BE and CH and prepared for replication in Europe (Letters of Support of stakeholders attached). CIRCUSOL will also deliver verified circular business innovation methodologies for broader use by other industries, sustainability professionals and academia; plus evidence-based knowledge in circular economy implementation for policy makers. All together, CIRCUSOL will contribute to a more resource efficient Europe, while reducing GHG emissions and creating new business opportunities and jobs.

NOBEL GRID will develop, deploy and evaluate advanced tools and ICT services for energy DSOs cooperatives and medium-size retailers, enabling active consumers involvement –i.e. new demand response schemas – and flexibility of the market – i.e. new business models for aggregators and ESCOs. Through the dual-use of telecommunication networks, and validating the integration of renewable generation presence and demand response systems, NOBEL GRID will offer advanced services to all actors in the retail markets of the electricity system in order to ensure that all consumers will benefit from cheaper prices, more secure and stable grids and low carbon electricity supply. The project results will be demonstrated and validated in real world environments with active involvement of all the actors, and based on the new business models defined during the project.

By 2050, 98 million Europeans could become prosumers by joining an energy community. The REScoopVPP project combines front-runner energy communities to create the most advanced community-driven smart building ecosystem for energy communities. The ecosystem consists of a Community-driven Flexibility Box (COFY-Box) acting as smart home controller, and a set of community tools to support energy services for aggregators, ESCO’s, BRP’s and suppliers of RES. The COFY-box will be the first truly open and collaborative building controller, based on existing open source home automation technology with more than 1.400 integrations. The COFY-box will be affordable and easy to install. Community tools will enable energy communities to become real-time asset operators by employing demand and production forecasting algorithms, a dynamic pricing module for implicit DR and an OpenADR-based explicit DR solution. REScoopVPP solutions will undergo a large-scale experimentation in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and the UK. The project will improve EV, PV and electric battery control, and will especially focus on the intelligent integration of thermal storage and hybrid heating solutions, capable of shifting fossil fuel consumption from legacy DHW and heating equipment to flexible renewable heat. Further attention will be given to smart plug control and the integration of equipment based on emerging EU-standards. This will improve comfort, while not adversely affecting original functionalities, quality and lifetime of the equipment. The ecosystem of REScoopVPP has the potential to impact 375.000 customers 5 years after the project and thus trigger primary energy savings of 559 GWh/year and improve the SRI of houses by 2 steps on average. To make sure that the ecosystem is viable, REScoopVPP will establish a dedicated legal entity that can bring solutions to the market and provide citizens with a European, community-driven alternative.

The city of Eeklo in Belgium works closely with local citizen-energy cooperatives to ensure access to affordable, local, renewable energy for its citizens. Since 2000 several wind turbines were developed on public grounds of the city by the citizen-energy cooperatives Ecopower and Volterra. This way over 500 households (5% of total households) in Eeklo became member of the cooperatives in the last 20 years. The average profile of these households are highly educated middle class families. As a city we want that our local energy is available for every citizen, especially households in energy poverty as they could benefit even more of lower energy prices from the cooperative Ecopower (that has a suppliers permit in Flanders). But becoming member of the cooperative means becoming shareholder by investing €250 euro in the cooperative, a financial barrier which makes membership out of reach for a lot of families in energy poverty. The city of Eeklo and Ecopower are setting up social energy shares to overcome this financial barrier. The social shares are shares of the cooperative that are pre-financed by the city and that can by used by lower income households. The households pay the value of the share (€250) spread over 6 years via their monthly advance invoice (€3.5 montly). They are full members of the cooperative from the start. We work closely with social services to identify households with difficulties to pay their energy bill and help them transfer to the cooperative supplier if they are interested. This way we try to make affordable, local, renewable energy accessible for every inhabitant of the city, regardless of their household budget.