In the EU the bio-based economy drives growth through job creation and innovation by utilizing renewable resources and through alignment with the Circular Economy and bioeconomy. In order to stay competitive, Europe´s industry must become greener, circular and digital through collaboration among companies, Member States, and rural regions in Europe. Within this context, the general objective of DRIVE is to increase the implementation of European local startups, fostering innovative ecosystems for the development of new value-added products, technologies and approaches, via a series of exploitation and trainings actions. Thus, the three pillars of the project, namely: the identification of the needs and project´s users, for instance, at least 2 regional accelerators and incubators will be contacted by the consortium in each of the three roadshows, according to the methodology, to exchange best practices and reinforce SMEs and start-ups participation, the second pillar, the roadshows and the hackathons, and the last one, the mentoring for the development of the technologies, are closely intertwined, as they have been conceived to cooperate in an integrated way, in order to exploit the benefits gained by the work team, meaning boosting the quality of their work and possible results. Therefore, the main outcomes of DRIVE can be summarized in four: to develop a tailored business model at an European level for pitching to investors, to apply for regional initiatives or European financial support instruments, to prepare a pitch presentation and identify investor events and to enroll in further acceleration programs for continued idea deployment and commercialization.

ACE-EX project provides a multidisciplinary profession, the “Expert at applying Circular Economy processes in agriculture” and tools to guarantee quality of training, recognition, transferability and exploitation. General objectives:- to support the agriculture sector in the transition to a Circular Economy (following “CE”);- to develop an entrepreneurial mind set for the new opportunities coming for the CE applications;- to facilitate the transition to a “green” chemistry using the waste/ surplus coming for agriculture;- to contribute to sectoral compliance with the EU Green Deal standards. Specific objectives:1. To upskill professionals working in the agriculture and industrial sector, specifically production of oil, wine and corn, in the reuse of agricultural production waste/surplus for the production of new business products and/or innovation of business processes by developing an innovative and multidisciplinary curriculum, also through V/R modules. 2. To provide Open Access and flexible training for a certification EQF 4 and 5, accessible virtually from professionals located in at least 9 EU and Extra Eu countries, guaranteeing sustainability of contents, constant update and scalability to an EQF 6 Master. Developing horizontal digital and green skills applicable to other professional sectors.3. To guarantee procedures for the RPL of professionals and link these arrangements with national accreditation authorities.4. To certify experts at applying CE in agriculture by developing professional skills that, on one side, enhance individuals’ employability and, on the other, are highly beneficial for agricultural firms, particularly wine, oil and cereals, since they provide them with the concrete opportunity of applying and benefit from CE practices.ACE-EX involves 20 consortium members from 9 EU and extra Eu countries, representing more than 200.000 agriculture firms Europe Wide, which will be approached during the project

SYSCHEMIQ will demonstrate how to migrate to a circular urban-industrial cross-border district, i.e. the CHEMELOT Circular Hub (CCH) in the Trilateral Euregio of NL, BE and DE. A Circular Economy Action Plan and a (4BEUR) Investment Agenda (2020-2030) are available. Stakeholder involvement schemes are in place, to allow governance within an ecosystem (Regional Government, Municipality, Industries, Educational and Research Institutes, Utilities and Cluster Management): a new way of working to overcome key-bottlenecks. Investment decisions have been made to set up mechanical recycling (4kT/a) and a 150 M€ semi-industrial (18kT/a) chemical pilot recycling plant, to run demos with optimised real-life Mixed Plastic Waste (MPW) streams. We will demo systemic solutions 1) a novel Dual-Track multistakeholder governance model, underpinned by the recently developed Plastic Recycling Impact Scenario: PRISM model (TRL6), and CIMS digital-twin 2) the CCH circular governance model (TRL6), 3) community-based innovation schemes; a Circular City Lab, citizens incentives schemes, incubator and novel skills development and innovation programmes with students (vocational, professional and academic) in a Circular Learning Lab (CHILL), 4) new plastic waste collection, sorting standards/protocols and technologies (e.g. prototype sorting line TRL6) for alignment of material flows in the value chain, 5) new Design rules (TRL 5) for plastic packaging products favouring mechanical and chemical recycling. Considering circa 1.1 Mt of MPW in NL and 30 Mt in EU, scenario calculations promise huge savings of 11.4 Mt CO2 eq./a and 190 kT/a virgin polyolefins. Business modelling and upscaling study will prepare investments in a 100-400 kT/a full-scale recycling facility. A structured Twinning programme with at least 5 selected regions (incl. Flanders and Lombardy), will foster replication, with the support of EU Platform organisations (ECRN, PRE) and in collaboration with the CCRI.

POWER4BIO project aims at empowering regional stakeholders to boost the transition towards bioeconomy regions in Europe by providing them with the necessary tools, instruments and guidance to develop and implement sound sustainable bioeconomy strategies. In particular, POWER4BIO will define a methodology based on a 3-steps approach (stakeholders engagement, regional analysis and strategy development) to guide European regions when preparing and reviewing their regional bioeconomy strategy and its associated implementation plan (roadmap), and which will be ultimately integrated in a Bioregional Strategy Accelerator Toolkit. POWER4BIO will also develop a catalogue of bio-based business models, including best practice examples, to support regions understand, identify and select the most adequate bio-based solutions for developing their bioeconomy and; POWER4BIO will issue recommendations to use and align the main funding instruments and policies in Europe to support bioeconomy business models. Moreover, POWER4BIO will rely on a comprehensive programme to foster mutual learning and intra- and interregional collaboration and networking among regional stakeholders to ensure knowledge transfer across sectors and regions and to jointly develop and complement different sustainable bioeconomy value chains within 10 participant regions member of the consortium (5 of which coming from Central and Eastern Europe) from 9 different countries. Finally, POWER4BIO will design and deliver an ambitious training programme to increase the skills and capacity of the regional stakeholders in several important aspects of the bioeconomy (sustainability in the bio-based value chains, synergies in funding instruments, technology transfer and entrepreneurship, etc.). All in all, the potential brought in the project is huge, considering that the 10 participant regions represent a population of around 88 million people, a GDP of 2460 billion EUR and an area of almost 450,000 km2.

The chemical industry is currently undergoing a quadruple or double twin transition. It encompasses green and digital transformation alongside circularity and the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS). The initiative “ChemSkills: enabling the green and digital skills transformation of the chemical industry” is to respond to these challenges and to identify and develop green and digital skills, in addition to skills to produce “safe and sustainable chemicals by design” within the low-carbon energy intensive ecosystem. The project will cover several sub-sectors of the chemical industry:-plastics-consumer chemicals-fertilisers-rubber-pharmaceuticals-petrochemicals.It will map the already existing skills and develop emerging occupational profiles and related qualifications covering upper and post-secondary VET levels (EQF levels 3 to 5) and tertiary levels (EQF levels 6 to 8). The project will bring together stakeholders to jointly implement strategies to address skills gaps in the above mentioned sub-sectors. The key stakeholders include social partners, business representations, research institutes, education and training providers, universities and public authorities, amongst others.