Sector-coupling is a promising approach to replace fossil fuels with renewables. However, this idea of “electrifying” the entire economy requires the rollout of new technologies and rules. The HyEfRe project helps with this by establishing green hydrogen ecosystems in eight regions. The partners foster an investment-friendly environment for renewable energy and green hydrogen technologies. They evaluate hydrogen potentials with a new model and develop and test a new tool to calculate ideal parameters for technical plants. Their action plan for policy actors will reduce regulatory barriers impeding a timely expansion of renewables and green hydrogen.
ZAVOD ENERGETSKA AGENCIJA ZA SAVINJSKO, ŠALEŠKO IN KOROŠKO
The Danube region is largely dependent on the import of fossil energy sources, leading to environmental and security concerns as well as concerns about efficiency. The concept of Renewable Energy Communities (REC) in the region is not widely known, and their operation is often hindered by legal, internal operational, infrastructural, or technical barriers. The NRGCOM project will foster the development of energy communities in the Danube Region by creating the right environment and conditions for their operation. Through a multi-level approach, the 13 project partners and 14 associated strategic partners from 12 countries will help to create the right environment and an informed society in the Danube Region in which community renewable energy initiatives can be launched and scaled up smoothly, facilitating the green transition and increasing energy efficiency, contributing to climate decarbonisation targets and enhancing energy security.
RENEWAT (Renewable Energies in European Water Mills) brings together 7 partners from 6 European countries with the aim of sharing knowledge and actions to lead renewable energy projects in existing water mills.
Europe's rivers host numerous hydraulic structures, and a proper understanding of their management has often been forgotten. Although more and more local project promoters wish to re-activate existing water mills, they endure many administrative barriers before the mill activity can be re-envisaged for micro hydropower production. RENEWAT overall objective is to upskill local and regional actors of the partners territories about water mills repowering, so that this renewable energy is clearly identified and supported in their local and regional policies amongst the renewable energy mix. In this way the project will improve specific policy instruments from different scales, approaches and locations, all together serving a complementary approach and vision about the repowering of existing water mills.
The COMMIT project was approved under the programme priority "Smarter Europe" in the 2nd call for proposals of the Interreg Europe programme (MFF 2021-2027). The project consortium consists of 11 partners from eight EU Member States, in which Energy Agency KSSENA is engaged in the form of a double regional partnership together with the Development Agency of the Savinjsko-Saleško Region. The overall objective of the Interreg Europe programme is to study and amend different policy instruments in force, which, in addition to national strategic frameworks, also include regional and local strategic and sustainable planning. In the framework of the COMMIT project Energy Agency KSSENA and RA SAŠA will tackle the Regional Development Programme of Savinjsko-Šaleška Region 2021-2027.
The Greet CE project adopts a multidisciplinary approach to smart specialization, aiming to enhance the innovation capacity of regional Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), especially in less developed regions of Central Europe and in one outermost European region of of Madeira. The consortium, comprising eight members from seven regions across six Central and Southern European countries, will accelerate the practical ability of regions to base their future development on their unique competitive advantages (resources and assets) and key socio-economic challenges.
Visions 2045 pursues the goal of accompanying schools on their way to climate neutrality. A holistic approach is taken to make them drivers and role models in reducing their carbon footprint and to engage them in reaching local climate and energy targets in collaboration with local authorities.
H2MA brings together 11 partners from all 5 Interreg Alpine Space EU countries (SI, IT, DE, FR, AT), to coordinate and accelerate the transnational roll-out of green hydrogen (H2) infrastructure for transport and mobility in the Alpine region. It works to accelerate the transnational roll-out of green hydrogen mobility infrastructure in the Alpine region, to curb CO2 emissions and foster the transition to low-carbon transport.
ProcuRE brings together 6 procurers from 6 countries, responsible for over 21,000 public buildings, to invest over €7 million in R&D to tackle their common challenge of achieving 100% Renewable Energy Supply (RES) in existing stock. Consortia bidding are expected to deliver a comprehensive package of tools enabling delivery across Europe and beyond of customised fullrenewable building renovation. The systemic packages comprise services from design to implementation, and day-to-day operation, and contracting/financing, ensuring that the building continues to perform as designed over the full life-cycle. ProcuRE packages must ensure the following: enable optimal selection of cutting-edge components and configurations for RES generation, storage and management, fully addressing the challenges of on-site RES and eliminating off-site supply; increase SRI by integration across technologies and BEMS providing good occupant control; must deploy advanced BIM to model outcomes in advance in an assessment framework which at speed and low cost delivers procurers and investors with transparent choices of their options to maximise value delivery across the complete life-cycle; must provide simple configuration to match regulatory differences; and must include innovative, embedded and cost-efficient training services to impart necessary skills to both operators and to occupants, whose behaviour is a growing factor to be taken fully into account. PCP competitive tendering and the three phases of R&D and supplier selection is expected to ensure delivery of reasonably mature renewables renovation packages and their entry onto the international market within the expected timescale. Package efficacy will be demonstrated in the types of building which dominate public portfolios and promise replication in the private sector, in a multi-country public demonstration of solutions meeting building stock decarbonisation targets - six configurations achieving 100% RES throughout the year.
3DIVERSE will enact a holistic, multi-sectoral and multi-level approach to planning and implementation of investments into sustainable energy infrastructure through coordinated application of supply and demand side measures. A conventional fragmented and sectional undertaking of investments, that are as a whole essential to a successful realization of the energy transition, will be replaced with a novel approach based on integration and aggregation of investment actions across four interconnected sectors which will ensure the optimal results in terms of environmental, socio-economic and financial benefits. The key outputs of 3DIVERSE apply to the preparation of an all-inclusive set of technical investment documentation (pre-feasibility studies, pre-investment designs, investment programmes, market research reports, operational monitoring analysis, construction, environmental and operational permits, etc.) and publications of the calls for tender (launch of procurement procedures) for tangible investment measures that will be defined through the PDA activities. 3DIVERSE will however move beyond the conventional processes related to investment and public procurement by incorporating innovative mechanisms for acquiring citizen engagement as well as novel financing mechanisms The approach of 3DIVERSE will build on the premise of mobilizing private capital to the largest possible extent and fostering community-driven investments by providing mechanisms that ensure improved access to capital, lower-investment costs, high transparency as well as financial and social incentives. The long-term ambition of the project is to effectively validate the approach on the example of the Savinjsko-šaleška coal intensive region in transition that will serve as highly replicable and scalable model to be implemented in partner regions within and beyond the EU.