This proposal aims at supporting the work which has been carried out by the secretariat of the European Technology and Innovation Platform on Renewable Heating and Cooling since 2011. The role of the secretariat is to assist the stakeholders of the RHC-ETIP in coordinating activities related to the definition and implementation of an innovation strategy to increase the use of renewable energy sources for heating and cooling, and to foster the growth and the market uptake of the relevant industries. The secretariat provides support to the structure of the RHC-ETIP, by organising meetings, events, and relevant consultations, and by assisting with the preparation of relevant documents (both of technical and of political nature) to raise the profile and importance of the renewable heating and cooling sector, and its related technologies. This proposal also addresses the need to enlarge the membership of the RHC-ETIP by involving more closely national policy makers, as well as other relevant stakeholders (related industries, and socio-economic experts) in its work. By supporting interactions between several stakeholders representing industry, research and academia, from different renewable heating and cooling technologies, and by gradually including complementary sectors and expertise, the SecRHC-ETIP will assist the RHC sector in strengthening its growth and competitiveness both vis-à-vis traditional heating and cooling technologies, as well as with respect to competitors coming from non-EU countries.

Consumers do not think about heating until their system breaks down. When it does, the replacement is always an urgent process, hindering the possibility to look for the best solutions in the market and making smarter choices regarding a heating system that will likely be in operation for the next 20 years. In Europe, there are more than 300 million heaters (space, water or combi) that have, on average, been installed more than 20 years ago. Considering the heating energy label framework, market assumptions are that more than 50% of these equipments perform as C or lower. Old and inefficient, this is the status of the installed heating stock. Now is the time to act and raise consumers’ awareness about the opportunities of a planned replacement. Taking advantage of the energy label for space and water heating, we can mainstream the labelling concept to the installed heating stock, allowing to use a well-known support decision tool to communicate and motivate the consumer to replace its heating system with modern high-efficiency and renewable solutions. HARP accompanies the consumer decision process, providing an impartial message, based on the energy label and presenting the market solutions that respond to the consumer’s heating needs, providing a quantified approach for economic and non-economic benefits and bridging the gap with the market providers and available national incentives. HARP is promoted by key knowledgeable partners in the fields of consumer behaviour, energy efficiency, heating solutions and business models, working directly with the consumer, or indirectly via professionals who are critical multiplying agents. Promoting dynamic efficient heating communities, where all the agents, from the supply to the demand side are committed to an efficient heating market, supporting the consumer to make smarter choices. This allows HARP to build a solid concept that will succeed in the participating countries and within the EU reach.

SolarHub’s overall objective is to strengthen connections between and scale-up 5 Greek and Turkish solar energy innovation ecosystems as a single, hybrid, cross-border, and interconnected Solar Energy Excellence Hub with an emphasis on agriculture applications. SolarHub's 4 Specific Objectives (SOs) are explicitly framed by the call's 5 Core Components and target the call's Expected Outcomes and the destinations Expected Impacts. These SOs are to: 1. Co-develop a Hub Strategy and a Joint Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda 2. Execute a diverse set of complementary interventions, engaging all players of the quadruple helix to support R&I and accelerate commercialization 3. Implement joint R&I activities to co-develop 4 pre-designs of diverse solar energy solutions 4. Maximize the project’s impacts through Dissemination, Exploitation, and Communication activities carefully tuned to actively engage all players of the quadruple helix To achieve these objectives, a diverse and complementary set of measures are proposed that include 1. Creation of relevant R& I strategies & policies 2. Networking between SolarHub & stakeholders 3. Multi-level engagement & training 4. Combination of R&I infrastructures for synergies 5. Creation of targeted joint programmes and linkages between the 2 countries based on sound technological solutions 6. Communicating the above to all major stakeholders in the targeted regions 7. Exploiting the positive results from all the above to setup a sustainable collaborative initiative after the end of the project. SolarHub's consortium contains 21 partners (7 Academic, 9 Business, 3 Public Authorities, and 2 Societal Actors) that are well-balanced between Academia and Business, and fully completes the quadruple helix. SolarHub is a 4 year project with 5 carefully designed Work Packages that efficiently exploit the consortium's diverse knowledge and expertise to develop Green solutions to today's Societal Challenges.

SOLINDARITY will develop, demonstrate and validate the feasibility of an integrated Solar Energy-based Heat Upgrade System (SEHUS) comprising solar energy resources, innovative High Temperature Heat Pumps (HTHP), Thermal Energy Storage (TES) and Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) for the deep decarbonization of industrial processes with temperatures up to 280°C. The solar energy resources include High Vacuum Flat solar Panels (HVFPs) for pressurized hot water generation at a temperature of up to 150°C with high performance Photovoltaic (PV) panels with trackers and special nanocoatings, that (apart from producing directly power for the process power needs) drive a novel, reverse Brayton HTHP to elevate its working medium (air) temperatures up to 440°C. The project will address all major technical challenges related to the integration of the aforementioned modules to the main process plant, while holistic orchestration at system level will be achieved thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled process control, Digital Twinning (DT) architecture and easy-to-use visualization dashboard, that will optimally manage all plant assets at any given time, efficiently matchmaking the available resources with the industrial power and heat needs. The pilot system to be developed will demonstrate its effectiveness, robustness, sustainability and cost-efficiency in three industrial sites, belonging to different industrial sectors (Food, Paper, Rubber industries) and climatic regions (Germany, Greece, Italy), utilising medium-grade heat at different temperatures (195-270°C) and media (diathermic oil, air), and having different plant capacities, operational and physical configurations, land constraints, fuels in use, etc. Moreover, 5 replication studies (3 in Jordan; 2 in Morocco) have been foreseen in solar resources-abundant non-EU Mediterranean region countries. To this end, the SOLINDARITY consortium brings together 18 partners from 6 EU countries and Switzerland, Morocco and Jordan.