The steel industry represents an important economic pillar of the European economy, but also 4% of all EU CO2 emissions. This reduction requires fundamental, rapid and large-scale systemic transformations to fully decarbonise the global steel industry system. Thanks to digital technologies applied in steel production it will be possible to optimise processes, reduce energy consumption and improve the quality of the final products, nonetheless the digital transition is still in progress and technological solutions are still requested to make a better use of industrial data. As acknowledged by the CSP and SRIA, digitalisation is a key enabler for a sustainable and competitive EU Steel Industry. In this framework, SMARTChain aims at improving digitalisation in steel industry to go a step further in process control and optimisation, realising a horizontal integration in the steel value chain, through secure data sharing, promoting the interoperability of systems and tools to aim better quality of final and intermediate products, while optimising energy consumption and consequently reducing CO2 emissions, contributing to the achievement of the EU climate neutrality goal. Thus, the project will focus on the connection between steelmakers and steel users enabling an exchange of information devoted to the optimisation of the quality of final and intermediate products. Finally, steelmaking operators will be involved in the implementation of digital technologies through training programs that will allow to create a workforce that will make advantage of digital transformation. To reach these objectives a digital platforms for steelmakers and steel users will be developed for the data gathering from all the steps of the production process and to connect the quality of final products with material properties. Moreover, an Industrial Data Space and a Digital Material Passport will developed for secure data exchange and to guarantee the traceability of material information.

CREATORS enables local initiators to create and operate advanced Community Energy Systems (CES) by supporting technical, financial and social processes. With the sector moving beyond inventor-lead pilots, local CES initiators lack the capacity for high-quality simulation, business modelling and automated operations that are required in communities with a range of vectors, 1000s of mixed members, and balancing/ trading that requires controls in milliseconds. Leading engineering firms Cordeel and COMSA work with specialists in simulation and energy trading (i.LECO), emulation for digital twins (Typhoon HIL), and financing (EnergyPro) to develop services that enable local professionals to apply state of the art energy system technologies. These applications and integrated packages will mature from TRL5-6 to TRL7-8 and eventually be offered as ´CES-as-a-Service´. The services will deliver 60% preparation and operational costs reductions, ensuring 99,95% uptime, 20-35% CAPEX reduction, and up to 40% additional incomes. The results are 5-10% local energy price reduction (below €0,18kWh) in systems covering all vectors, with 10³ - 10⁴ participants. The approach creates 2 fte jobs in each CES, whilst for partners remote services could reach 10% the system turnover, in what is a high growth market. In standardizing simulation and assessment tools in close collaboration with local stakeholders (30 LoS), the BRIDGE initiative and lenders (industry-lead Investor Confidence Protocols), CREATORS significantly advances commercial readiness (CRI3). The applications will be developed in 4 sites (Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, Estonia), and replicated in another 6 (the Netherlands, Bulgaria, France, Spain). The pilots mix vectors, participants and business models, covering in total >2000 households, >500SMEs and >5 industrial sites. Ten more prospective CES will be supported in feasibility studies through a competitive process, which also aims to prepare for commercial market entry.

The INEVITABLE Innovative Action aims to realize a fully digitalized monitoring technology for an optimized and improved performance of manufacturing processes. Use cases from the energy and resource intensive sectors steel and nonferrous metals are addressed, whereas the considered manufacturing sites are in Slovenia, Austria and Spain covering primary and secondary steelmaking and investment casting of nonferrous metal alloys. The focus of INEVITABLE is to develop high-level supervisory control systems for different production plants and on the demonstration in operational environment (TRL 7) to enable autonomous operation of the processes based on embedded cognitive reasoning. Key Performance Indicators will be defined related to resource consumption and product qualities. Based on that, a full digital transformation of the plants will be done including acquisition, storage, processing and analytics of data streams, furthermore, communication and automation, and finally, standardization of relevant data interfaces. Predictive models will be developed being combined with smart and networked sensor technologies to correlate process parameters with quality indicators of the manufactured products. The models will be tested in offline mode on the one hand, and in online mode on the other hand by means of comprehensive plant trials at the industrial partner sites. Dissemination activities will transfer the knowledge throughout the SPIRE sectors. The industrial partners are supported by scientific partners with excellent competences in the field of digitalization. INEVITABLE will improve the capabilities for reliable and real-time control logics of final product properties and process efficiency to increase the flexibility of plant operators. Improved and flexible production performance is expected with a simultaneous reduction of resource consumption and CO2 emissions contributing to a more competitive and sustainable metallurgic industry within the EU.