Industrial and systemic innovation are crucial elements for the transition towards a sustainable, regenerative, inclusive and just circular economy. Boosting circularity can be part of the policy response to address systemic crisis such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic by providing industrial and systemic solutions for economic recovery and sustainable growth.

TOPIC 1: CLOSING THE INDUSTRIAL CARBON CYCLE TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE

Specific challenge:

• Greening of industrial and energy production1 by using CO2 emissions from industrial processes.
• The challenge is to sustainably convert CO2 emissions from industrial processes into synthetic fuels and chemicals utilising renewable energy driven processes with novel, highly optimised and energy efficient catalytic systems. This has the potential to reduce by over 50% the current 370Mt of CO2 emissions per annum2 related to the chemical industry. However, it is necessary to demonstrate the industrial and economic feasibility of producing synthetic fuels and chemicals by scaling-up the developed technologies to reach industrial production levels and validate the industrial exploitability.

Expected impact:

• Industrial scale demonstrator operational by 2026 based on Industrial Symbiosis and novel,highly optimised and energy efficient catalytic systems.
• Significant reduction of industrial CO2 emissions (~200Mt p.a. reduction by 2050) with the potential to achieve a carbon intensity below 20g CO2eq/MJ.
• Enhance the effectiveness of renewable energy sources (i.e. solar, wind) by enabling the production and transmission of a flexible high energy density storage medium in the form of synthetic fuels to be used for specific industry segments (e.g. aviation, chemical, shipping, defence) and validated through Techno-Economic and Life Cycle assessment (TEA/LCA).
• Demonstrate and validate the industrial feasibility and cost effectiveness of the technologies, at pilot plant level with a minimum chemical production capacity of 4000 tons per annum, while enhancing Europe’s sustainable competitiveness.
• Significant indirect impact on air quality and citizen health through the filtering of flue gas emissions from large industrial plants (e.g. energy, cement, chemical and steel).
• Foster a cross-sectorial European innovation eco-system to deploy sustainable alternatives
  to fossil resources and create demonstration capacity for sustainable catalytic systems of
  superior efficiency towards 2030 and 2050.

Scope:

1. Develop and deploy highly innovative catalytic material systems to facilitate the production of synthetic fuels and chemicals from industrial CO2 (including CO and H2) flue gas emissions, aiming at 50% increase in the overall efficiency compared to the State-of-the-Art.
2. Develop innovative, renewable energy driven, catalytic processes, to produce synthetic fuels and chemicals, at a sufficiently large scale to demonstrate its cost effectiveness.
3. Demonstrate the full value chain for industrial production of synthetic fuels and chemicals, whilst reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
4. Address financial, regulatory, environmental, land and raw material constraints, as well as public acceptance issues related to the proposed technological pathways.

Proposals are expected to bring the core technology from TRL 4-5 up to TRL 7 at the end of the
project. The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up
to EUR XX million and with a duration of up to 5 years would allow this specific challenge to be
addressed appropriately.

Type of action: Innovation actions (IA) (min. 2 projects funded)
Cross-cutting Priorities: International cooperation

TOPIC 2: DEMONSTRATION OF SYSTEMIC SOLUTIONS FOR THE TERRITORIAL DEPLOYMENT OF THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Boosting circularity can be part of the policy response to address systemic crisis such as climate change and the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic by providing circular systemic solutions for sustainable growth and economic recovery. In the context of an increasing global consumption and growing pressure on resources, there is an urgent need to decouple economic growth from resource use and to increase Europe’s resilience to uncertainty in raw material supply and increase security of value chains. A sustainable, regenerative, inclusive and just circular economy can significantly help our economies to reconcile with the limits and boundaries of our planet by restoring natural systems, reducing GHG emissions and minimising loss of natural capital and biodiversity.

Targeted impact

Demonstrate systemic solutions for the territorial deployment of the circular economy at the level of governance closest to citizens:

• demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of at least one circular systemic solution per territorial cluster; identify the economic, social and environmental benefits and challenges of each circular systemic solution;
• contribute to overcome market failures, testing public-private partnership models,
• interregional cooperation mechanisms and/or multilevel funding synergies useful for de risking business investments;
• contribute to connect different stakeholders of specific value chains, including key actors of the regional innovation ecosystems and final users;
• provide policy-makers and public and private investors with concrete examples of effective and sustainable systemic circular solutions to be replicated in other areas.

Socio-economic and environmental impact:

• create jobs and new sustainable business opportunities;
• demonstrate contribution to key pathways towards long-term environment and climate goals;
• increase circularity of clusters’ economic sectors and social and community-based innovation schemes;
• promote the role of ecosystems services in the circular economy;
• increase the clusters’ overall ecosystem, sustainable management of local resources, and reduce GHG emissions;
• promote the use of natural capital accounting into business strategy and decision making to optimise the circular economy;
• promote decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources;
• promote eco-design in businesses and value chains based on local resources.

Replication and scalability of systemic solutions in order to multiply the economic, social and environmental benefits to achieve policy targets of the European Green Deal, EU Circular
Economy Action Plan and EU Bioeconomy Strategy at regional, national, European and international level:

• ensure replicability, scalability and visibility of successful systemic solutions;
• facilitate industrial exploitation of demonstrated research results;
• contribute to address bottlenecks such as certification and labelling issues, standardisation and data exploitation;
• contribute to connect SMEs to large companies value chains;
• contribute to connect and upgrade open access circular demonstration facilities across
• Europe.

Disclaimer: The presentation of draft topics and the feedback provided shall in under no circumstances bind the European Commission in the final formulation of topics for the call. The binding call text will be published following the formal decision by the European Commission on the Funding and tender opportunities portal. (Source https://ec.europa.eu/)