The aim of greenGain is to strengthen the energy use of regional and local biomass from the maintenance of areas and landscape elements, which is performed in the public interest. The scope of the biomass used, will be any material predominantly produced from nature conservation and landscape management, but not from energy-crops. The main target groups are regional and local players, who are responsible for maintenance and conservation work and for the biomass residue management in their regions. Moreover, the focus will be on service providers - including farmers and forest owners, their associations, NGOs and energy providers and consumers. The project will show strategies to build up reliable knowledge on local availability of these feedstocks and know-how on issues from logistics to storage and sustainable conversion pathways for the transformation of these feedstocks to renewable energy (heat and energy products). Furthermore political, legal and environmental aspects will be addressed in model regions. Awareness raising, governance and public acceptance actions will be focussed on. General guidelines will be prepared to guarantee a wide dissemination to other regions in the EU. The regional partners will be actively supported by Technical Partners for the project measures’ development and implementation. As a CSA, the project focal point will be the exchange between the model regions and other similar relevant players in the EU, by good practice exchange, a topic-specific website, several workshops and educational site visits in different regions as well as other standard public relations activities. The project team is carefully balanced between technical and scientific organisations and local demand side oriented players. Regions in northern Europe with a wide knowledge in this field are cooperating with European (south-west, middle, east) regions, having an untapped potential, that can be accessed through efficient knowledge transfer.

The WaterWorks2015 proposal responds to the Horizon 2020 (H2020) Societal Challenge 5 2015 Call topic Water-3 [2015]: Stepping up EU research and innovation cooperation in the water area. WaterWorks2015 aims at pooling resources from the 32 participating research programme owners / managers of 23 countries to implement a joint call for proposals, with EU co-funding in the area of sustainable water use in agriculture and forestry. It's a collaboration between the Joint Programming Initiatives (JPIs), Water JPI “Water Challenges for a Changing World” and FACCE JPI “Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change”. Achieving a “sustainable water use in agriculture, to increase water use efficiency and reduce soil and water pollution” is at the intersection of the two JPIs, contributing to the implementation of their respective Strategic Research Agendas. WaterWorks2015 includes 9 organisations from associated and third countries in an effort to reinforce international cooperation. Additional Activities will also be carried out to further support the implementation and strategy of the Water JPI. The overall aims include: • Increasing the value of relevant national and EU R&D funding by concerted and joint planning, implementation and evaluation of national research programmes; • Pooling financial resources from participating states towards the definition and implementation of a Co-funded transnational and multi-disciplinary Call for research and innovation proposals. The aim of the Call will be to support the implementation of initiatives and environmental policies, in particular those related to water and agriculture & forestry, as a way to increase water use efficiency and to reduce soil and water pollution; • Overcoming the fragmentation of European water and agriculture/forestry-related research and innovation activities; • Supporting the implementation and the development of the two Joint Programming Initiatives, seeking synergies in overlapping research issues.

Allthings.bioPRO will create and implement a highly innovative gamification ecosystem combining a serious game, a smartphone app and on- and offline communication and engagement activities to enable citizens to provide direct input into the agenda of the bio-based industry. The project will apply a comprehensive participatory approach to engage citizens and all quadruple helix stakeholders in the co-design and co-creation of a serious online game as innovative tool to raise awareness, support learning and gather citizen generated input and data. The project focusses on four themes closely related to everyday life: food packaging, fashion and textiles, kids and schools, and jobs and careers. These themes are central to the serious game and smartphone app and will also guide an associated public communication campaign, building on the current BioCannDo project. Citizen engagement will be organized in a series of Focus Groups and Co-Creation Workshops at the local level, supported by 8 regional partners and implemented in the local language. The serious game and the smartphone app will not only engage citizens using them, but can also be used as tool to aggregate citizens’ ideas, preferences and opinions related to the four themes and relevant products and inform them about bio-based alternatives for fossil based products. Taking up the results of the co-creation process the project will explore possibilities creating a Citizens Action Network and assess how it can support a bioeconomy citizen observatory. Project results will be relevant to brand owners, bio-based industries, Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy, policy actors and others. Allthings.bioPRO will establish close collaboration with them to ensure project results are of high quality, relevant and of direct use. Results will help stakeholders appreciate citizens’ perspectives and views on the bioeconomy and give them access to citizen generated data on preferences and ideas on specific product applications.

The ERA-Net “Cofund on BioTechnologies” (ERA CoBioTech) aims to better use synergies between current mechanisms of biotechnology research funding in Europe, to highlight the benefits of a bio-based economy for society, and to thus maintain and strengthen Europe’s global lead in modern biotechnology. The co-funded call will focus on application-oriented research in: a) Synthetic biology approaches to design and construct new biological parts, devices and systems b) Systems biology approaches to metabolic engineering and optimisation of biological processes c) Identification and use of the metabolic potentials of genomic data d) Chemical and biotechnological approaches to transform bio-based molecules into molecules with high added value. Bundling three predecessor ERA-Nets in the area of biotechnology, ERA CoBioTech significantly increases public funding (call volume ~ 30 Mio €), intensifies collaboration across relevant sectors and countries, and thus - advances RD&I in industrial biotechnology - establishes systems and synthetic biology as technology drivers in applied biotechnology, and - enhances the potential for exploitation through active industry involvement. Necessary steps and measures to achieve these goals will be encompassed in a joint Strategic Agenda. With a “European Biotechnology Hub”, ERA CoBioTech realises an entirely new concept, reaching out to key actors and stakeholders from multiple biotechnology-related areas in order to align different European strategic instruments with the goals of the KET biotechnology programme under Horizon 2020 and to increase public awareness of biotechnology for industrial uses. ERA CoBioTech will implement additional funding activities without EC co-funding, which will advance RD&I in industrial biotechnology in line with the Strategic Agenda and the outcomes of the "European Biotechnology Hub." ERA CoBioTech thus provides biotechnology stakeholders with tailor-made support regarding information, communication, networking and funding.