SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund will bring together 15 national organisations owning and / or managing major solar power research and innovation programmes throughout Europe, covering photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP). According to the challenges addressed in the work programme on Low Carbon Energy, SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund has different objectives: • To implement a joint call on subjects of highest priority and European added value in line with the Solar Europe Industry Initiative within the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan • To pool resources and to provide critical mass for transnationally highly relevant and innovative projects • To mobilise 20 MEUR of public funding (national and EC funding), and, together with the resources provided by the private industry sector, a total of 40 MEUR. • To enhance coordination, coherence and networking between national programmes SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund will contribute to substantial cost reductions of solar power technologies, economic development of the European solar power sector and to reinforce Europe’s strong position in solar power technologies. Reducing technology cost and advancing manufacturing technologies, applications and grid / system integration are essential to increasing the deployment of solar power technologies. This way, SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund will greatly contribute to: • Acceleration of the time to market by advancing technologies • Affordable, cost-effective and resource-efficient technology solutions • Decarbonisation of the energy system • Sustainable, secure energy supply and completion of the energy internal market • Strengthening the European industrial technology base (growth and jobs in Europe SOLAR-ERA.NET Cofund follows on from SOLAR-ERA.NET project and network and previous PV-ERA-NET network, taking advantage of more than ten years of ERA-NET experience and expertise from all major key stakeholders in the solar research, innovation and industry sector.

The objective of the 2nd Concerted Action for the Energy Efficiency Directive (CA-EED 2) is to foster exchange of information and experience among Member States and other participating countries (Norway) with a view to facilitating to the implementation of the Directive 2012/27/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on energy efficiency (EED), including the implementation of the foreseen re-cast of this Directive. The specific objectives of the Action are: • To enhance and structure the sharing of information and experiences from national implementation whilst promoting good practice concepts in activities to improve and strengthen MS implementation of the EED. • To encourage dialogue between MS on common approaches for the effective implementation of particular parts of the EED. • To complement the work of the EED Committee assisting the European Commission. The expected impact of the Action consists of a more harmonized approach and improved implementation of the EED in all MS, as well as the transfer of good practices between countries. The objectives of the CA-EED 2 will be achieved by organising information exchange via amongst others 8 structured plenary meetings for coverage of the various topics. The meetings will allow experts from implementing bodies and ministries in the MS to discuss and exchange views, and aim to achieve as much convergence of objectives and methodologies as appropriate, avoiding redundant efforts and maximizing the benefits that can be obtained from the work otherwise required from individual MS working on their own. A large part of the work in the CA-EED 2 will be done in the sessions during the plenary meetings, focussing on good practice examples, but also through Working Groups that interact between the meetings and exchange of information through the forum on the CA-EED website. In order to structure the topics covered by the EED Expert Areas have been identified encompassing the main areas of the EED.

Smart Cities and Communities have been identified as key to achieving the energy efficiency targets for 2020 and 2050. The main objective of this ERA-NET is to stimulate successful practice and facilitate replicability within Smart Cities and Communities projects and also across projects in order to achieve a technological shift in the current energy system and provide smart and integrated solutions for technology, government and society. ERA-NET Smart Cities and Communities aims to create solutions in the form of projects, which demonstrate or at least constitute a decisive step towards implementations that (1) help cities deal with a long uncertain time horizon, (2) monitor ongoing experiences and implement change in the project when necessary, and (3) avoid pitfalls already encountered by others and facilitate collective learning of stakeholders embedded within a physical and social context. Additional activities within the planned ERA-NET are: (A) to work towards a joint call with China and (B) to align national R&D funding with Structural Funds. (A): A structured and systematic approach towards a joint call with China on smart city research will be developed making highest use of existing relations, activities and experience of European Funding Agencies with Chinese partners in order to develop a joint call with China. Beneficiaries of this call (mainly research organisations and companies) would be given a good starting position for further research and development projects. (B) The realisation of smart cities measures requires large investment volumes. Thus, the combination and clustering of different financing instruments is necessary. In line with the new "smart specialization" strategy of the EC, the proposed additional activities should encourage and enable Member States, regions and their Managing Authorities to align their national R&D funding schemes with available Structural Funds (in particular ERDF, but also ESF resources).

The ODYSSEE-MURE project aims to support policy makers in EU Member States to fulfill their obligations in the framework of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (EED). In particular, it provides user-friendly databases and web-tools for monitoring and evaluating the impact of energy efficiency policies. The ODYSSEE database and facilities contain and analyse latest available energy consumption and energy efficiency indicators by sector, end-use in households and services, by mode in transport. The MURE database and facilities contain and analyse energy efficiency policies and measures by sector. These tools have been conceived in the past and will be extended under this project by an experienced team comprising national energy efficiency agencies from 28 EU Member States (plus Norway, Switzerland and Serbia), and a strong technical coordination. Future inclusion of Balkan countries will be prepared under this project. We enhance, update and modernise these tools for support to the Member States through regional and national training events as well as dissemination products such as country/sector profiles, newsletters, policy briefs and webinars. In addition, we focus on operationalising the Energy Efficiency First Principle (EE1-P) for the MS, which is a key requirement in the EU Energy Union Governance Regulation . We will develop an indicator-based approach to EE1, considering wider aspects such as (1) New Societal Trends (e.g. the Shared Economy) which may increase or reduce energy demand, (2) Energy poverty, (3) the multiple benefits of energy efficiency. We will disseminate the analysis developed in this project to national bodies, inter alia by dissmeinating the outputs at key conferences (such as the eceee conferences).