STEP-IN will develop a global methodology for the effective analysis and tackling of energy poverty. STEP-IN has identified three highly challenging locations with diverse characteristics across Europe including: a mountainous region in Greece, a rural area in Hungary and an urban area in the UK with low quality housing. Within each of these areas there are a range of vulnerable consumers (e.g. low income households, elderly people, single-parent households). At each of these locations a living lab will be set up which will bring together local experts and stakeholders with energy poor consumers. These labs will consist of a range of approaches including energy cafes, advisor visits and ICT systems. The ICT tools provided by STEP-IN will support consumers, advisors and local stakeholder organisations to make effective decisions. To ensure the success of the living labs STEP-IN has partnered with key local stakeholders and schemes at the chosen locations. The emphasis will be on improving the participants' quality of life through maintaining or improving comfort levels while at the same time encouraging more efficient energy usage. The energy advice provided will seek to minimize rebound effects and environmental impacts. All labs will be assessed using metrics such as energy consumption & mix, types of behavior change and levels of comfort. This will ensure that the participants benefit, while at the same time the labs’ impact can be assessed and that the global methodology is validated and can be up-scaled. This will ensure that the approaches are relevant and out with the project. The project has over 35 letters of support from organisations including regulators, MEPs, charities, energy providers, housing organisations, local authorities and Government Ministries who will take part in a stakeholder network. This will lead to the results being disseminated at local, national and EU level.

ACCOMPLISH aims at increasing the readiness of enterprises of any size to face an era of unprecedented regulatory scrutiny by simplifying, integrating and automating compliance in their data/AI operations, their data/AI assets, their solutions and eventually their overall organisations. ACCOMPLISH will deliver a novel AI-based compliance and certification framework cross-cutting the regulatory/legal, environmental, cybersecurity and business/industry-specific compliance perspectives to modernise, automate and trace the compliance and certification processes with the help of open-source, well-defined and extensible compliance policy models while always ensuring a human-in-the-loop (HITL) approach explaining the compliance requirements and results, as well as proactively alerting about any potential risks/violations. Through the ACCOMPLISH Compliance Digital Passport, the previously “static” compliance and certification assessments will be transformed into up-to-date compliance proof that effectively promotes transparency and accountability for any interested stakeholder. ACCOMPLISH shall also deliver inherently-compliant data economy enablers for Data/AI operations, as reliable mechanisms to design, execute, and trace/observe the data and AI/ML pipelines, as well as to monitor/control their outputs (in terms of datasets, ML/DL models, analytics results). In order to demonstrate the actual innovation and added value that can be derived through the ACCOMPLISH advancements, the ACCOMPLISH results will be validated: I. Through their actual application to address real-life problems in four representative industries that are characterised by a varying maturity level of data/AI operations and compliance: (a) Energy, (b) Automotive, (c) Robotics & Manufacturing, and (d) Aviation; II. Through their integration in different digital solutions, either open source or commercial, to showcase their application within the established data spaces and/or AI market landscape.

The European Commission’s policy framework (i.e., Clean Energy Package, FiT 55) seeks to decarbonise the energy system, encouraging the electrification of heat and transport, as well as the connection of more clean but intermittent generation. Electricity markets and smart grid digitalization should proceed very fast to enable the fulfillment of these targets, incentivizing energy consumers and maximizing the use of assets from different energy consumption sectors (i.e., electricity, water, heating, cooling, mobility) in order to fully exploit the flexibility services. ENFLATE project will build upon existing solutions on data drivel energy services and non-energy services, and replicate them in different geographies, climate and consumer needs. It will propose applicable consumer-centered flexibility platforms and test them in Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland engaging local consumers, TSOs, DSOs, market operators, regulatory authorities, service providers, manufacturers, academia. It will provide smart grid innovative technologies, peer-to-peer market platforms for consumers, smart building and local community cross vector flexibility services, integration of consumer centered flexibility with pan European spot markets. Efficient business models will be developed and tested, combing energy services with health and mobility services. The developed ENFLATE project will be interoperable with existing data platforms in Horizon 2020, like ONENET, CoordiNET, SmartNet and INTERRFACE, leveraging the benefits of data exchange and adaptive middleware architectures. ENFLATE will evaluate the impact of the proposed multi-vector flexibility services to local, regional and pan European level.

CRETE VALLEY aims to create a Renewable Energy Valley 'Living Lab' (REV-Lab) in Crete. It is envisioned as a decentralised renewable energy system that combines leading-edge ICT technologies, interoperable and open digital solutions (including data sovereignty), social innovation processes, and sound business models that are easy to adopt. CRETE VALLEY will demonstrate a digitalised, distributed, renewable, low carbon landscape that is affordable for all and fully covers the local energy needs on an annual basis, utilizing multiple renewable energy carriers and leveraging energy storage technologies. The REV-Lab will integrate four Community Energy Labs (CELs) located in distinct sites across CRETE VALLEY, conceived as Innovation Hubs. An integrated social, technological & business approach will be deployed, providing: A Social Science Framework for REV-Labs & CELs, innovative multi-level governance models & social-driven mechanisms for involving citizens in the co-design, implementation and exploitation of RES; AI-based market segmentation algorithms, MCDA methods and consensus analysis for REV configuration; Interactive tools for REV planning (REV Readiness Assessment & computation, Augmented Reality applications, decision support tool); Energy Data Space compliant digital backbone for consumer and REV-level data-driven ‘activation’; P2P DLT/Blockchain digital marketplace for tokenised energy and non-energy assets valuation and reciprocal compensation; Data-driven operational analysis, advanced AI/ML tools and flexibility modelling services for optimal operation & resilience of the local energy grid; System-of-system Dig. Twin for multiple carrier grid management & operation; Data-driven services and apps for energy efficiency and activation performance management towards energy autonomy; Enabling RES technologies to increase the power production; REV Business Sandbox and blueprints for REV-Lab setup, upscaling and replication (including 4 Follower Communities).