Nature-based solutions (NBS) aim to help societies to address a variety of environmental, social and economic challenges in sustainable ways. They are actions which are inspired by and supported by nature. Some involve using and enhancing existing natural solutions to challenges, while others are exploring more novel solutions, for example, based on how non-human organisms and communities cope with environmental extremes. NBS are energy and resource-efficient, and resilient to change, but to be successful they must be adapted to local conditions. The main objective of the present project is the development of a multi-stakeholder communication platform that will support the understanding and the promotion of nature based solutions in local, regional, EU and International level. Through dialogue uptake facilitation and steering mechanisms as well as knowledge capacity building, the ThinkNature Platform will bring together multi-disciplinary scientific expertise, policy, business and society, as well as citizens. This platform will be efficient, fluent to use and attractive to a wide variety of actors and stakeholders because it merges all aspects of NBS in a clear, pyramidal methodological approach. It will create a wide interactive society that builds new knowledge with a wide geographical scope. As a result, ThinkNature will provide the necessary policy and regulatory tools to solve significant societal challenges such as human well-being, tackling energy poverty, impacts of climate change, etc. through continuous dialogue and interaction.

Who has never enjoyed the smell of a wood fire during a winter walk? In fact, behind this positive feeling, you smell the good odor of benzene or naphatlene which are nothing but VOCs and PAHs emitted during the combustion of wood. These compounds can be found in the atmosphere in gaseous form or adsorbed on the surface of soot particles emitted during wood combustion (WC). To put it another way, although wood energy is considered a green energy that is carbon neutral, it is not without impact on both the environment and human health. Indeed, air pollution, especially particulate pollution, is responsible for 48,000 deaths each year in France and more than 400,000 deaths in Europe. It is mainly the fine particles (PM2,5) which are pointed out, they are more numerous and more dangerous because of their propensity to penetrate deeply into the body and to go up to the pulmonary alveoli/blood exchange. These are mainly emitted by the residential sector, and more precisely, by domestic wood-burning appliances. It is to be noted that wood-energy is the first renewable energy in the energy mix both in France and in Europe. This sector represents 10% of the total European energy mix (2016). In view of these data and, taking into account the substantial effort required by Europe for the development of renewable energies, the part of wood energy in the final energy mix must be multiplied by 2 by 2030 to achieve those objectives. Since energy transition must not lead to human health and environment threats, the European Union has tightened requirements concerning the emissions of WC appliances with the Ecodesign directive which took effect in january 2022. This directive fixes the values of the emissions (gaseous pollutants and particles) to be respected by the residential combustion system put on the market in the future. Considering the lifetime of this kind of appliances and the current range of solutions, it is urgent to offer an innovative and novel retrofit solution that will really impact air quality at the level of the emissions. Two kinds of particules are emitted by wood residential wood combustion (RWC) : 1) “primary” particles which are directly emitted by the combustion process, 2) the “secondary” particles which are formed in the atmosphere from gaseous precursors as VOC or PAH. The grand challenge of the WC sector is on developing a remediation system able to simultaneously decrease fine particles and some gaseous pollutants. OLLIWOOD will be the project that will offer to suppliers the potential to develop a functionalized media allowing simultaneous decrease of particles and gaseous pollutants emitted by the RWC. If successful, OLLIWOOD will open the path to the future adoption of such novel media by developing a system which is adapted to residential use which means that the process must be designed in order to limit the drop pressure, the maintenance, the cost and the size. For that, our starting hypothesis is on developing a process that would involve the oxidizing potential of the particles resulting from WC and finally concretized all the research that has been performed on the oxidative potential of particles. By definition, the oxidative potential of particles is their capacity to induce a secondary reaction with other components. Based on the properties of the particles, the target is to develop a remedial process allowing to oxydise the particles to avoid clogging the filter. In order to give itself the means to complete this project, the considering consortium should consist of 6-7 partners with complementary skills and experimental facilities whose interaction in this project is essential to achieve the objectives of this proposal. Currently 4 partners have responded favorably (IMT-Atlantique, CSTB, LORFLAM and Eastern University of Finland), 1 is under discussion (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano) and 2 are being contacted (Technical University of Denmark and Instituto de Carboquemica).