Currently, economies worldwide are pursuing mostly a linear model of production which leads to massive material losses, dependency on geopolitically instable states and volatile markets for primary resources. A circular economy, on the contrary, seeks to counter this approach to ?preserve the value of utilized resources and materials as long as possible, to use them as frequently as possible, and to produce as little waste as possible. European industry needs solutions to mitigate the barriers for industrial data reusability and facilitate the unlocking of value from data. Joint Industrial Data Exchange Platform is a place where industrial data is fused for interconnecting seemingly different sectors into the collaboration pipeline. It builds upon the principles of Industry 4.0, by adopting a coherent approach for the semantic communication between diverse actors aimed towards direct or indirect contribution to the EU?s climate neutrality goals of 2050. JIDEP is a landing place to any organization which has any kind of data obstacle to be addressed, on its paths towards delivering more sustainable material, product, service, or solution. Within JIDEP, built-in tools are made available for unlocking the value of the data, which can lead to the development of more sustainable solutions, technologies, and materials. JIDEP is also an optimizing continuum, covering the entire product lifecycle and steering it towards circular standards implementation at technological and regulatory levels. Finally, JIDEP is a tool equipped with resilience frameworks for growing organizational and industrial capacities to withstand supply chain disruptions in short-, medium- and long-term clauses. As such, JIDEP ingests industrial data and produces sustainability, resilience, and circularity artifacts for its participants.

The role of power, heating and cooling is critical to achieve the EU objective of climate neutrality by 2050. Heating and cooling represent today 46% of EU energy system, that is, more than 5700 TWh, out of which, only 18% are produced with renewable sources of heating. To exploit the geothermal for energy balancing at scale, it is essential to focus on the best use of low to medium temperature resources because Europe possesses mostly low-enthalpy resources at temperature ranging from 110oC to 170oC and they are predominantly found in sedimentary formations such as the Pannonian Basin or the Upper Rhein Graben. EGS based geothermal can be developed anywhere across the EU. Low to medium temperature geothermal field developed based on either hydrothermal resources or EGS can be technically exploited by binary or ORC plant for power generation. Flexible ORC operation to produce load following power is economically challenging. nGEL is aiming to transform a geothermal ORC plant to a flexible tri-generation plant capable of both efficiently as well as cost effectively responding to the dynamic demand of power, heating, and cooling, attributing geothermal energy as a dispatchable source to balance the power and thermal grid against the progressive integration of intermittent RES (i.e., solar, wind). This will be achieved through the integration of absorption chiller, thermal energy storage, cold thermal energy storage, heat exchangers, smart control and energy management system (EMS) with AI functionalities. EMS will schedule the production and distribution of power, heat and cooling by interacting day-ahead market, grid operator, and analysing predicted energy demand and prices. If the nGEL technology can be implemented in all of the existing ORC plants in the EU, around 215 TWht heat can be delivered to the thermal grid, which is approximately 4% of the EU current annual heat demand, which corresponds to annual economic saving (on NG import) of € 9.6 billion/year.

The sales of electric vehicles (EVs) are increasing but their drivers still encounter problems to find appropriate charging options. The vision of eCharge4Drivers is to focus on the users and substantially improve the EV charging experience within cities and on long trips, making it better than refuelling an ICE vehicle. The work will start with wide surveys in 10 demonstration areas, to capture the a priori users’ perceptions and expectations as regards the various charging options and their mobility and parking habits. Based on the survey findings and after matching with the perspective of authorities, operators and service providers, the project will develop and demonstrate in 10 areas, including metropolitan areas and TEN T corridors, easy-to-use, scalable and modular, high- and low-power charging stations, low-power DC charging stations and components with improved connection efficiency and standardised stations for LEVs. All stations will offer various direct payment methods and bigger user-friendly displays. The charging stations and all actors’ back-ends will support the ISO 15118 Plug & Charge feature and will enable the standardised transfer of enhanced information in the ecosystem, thus enabling the interoperability of communication and the provision of more sophisticated services to the users before, during and after the charging process, including smart charging services. The project will demonstrate additional convenient charging options within cities, a mobile charging service, charge points at lamp posts and networks of battery swapping stations for LEVs. Using the knowledge generated, the project will propose an EV Charging Location Planning Tool to determine the optimum mix of charging options to cover the user needs, recommendations for legal and regulatory harmonisation and guidelines for investors and authorities for the sustainability of charging infrastructure and services.

Rigorous thermodynamic models are crucial to understanding the properties of geofluids, as part of planning for exploration, design and operation of geothermal energy facilities. However, these models are currently incomplete and do not give accurate enough results for reliable planning; Operators commonly need to carry out empirical, site-specific trials instead, which are costly and occur ‘after the fact’, reducing their effectiveness. The GEOPRO project will produce a set of integrated knowledge based design and operation tools to allow the geothermal industry to explore, design and operate systems more effectively, reducing the LCOE to competitive levels. To do this, we will firstly generate new experimentally derived datasets to fill gaps in current knowledge of the heat and mass transfer behaviour of complex and highly concentrated fluids under hot and superhot conditions. These will provide next-generation equations of state, which we incorporate into a set of operation and exploration tools. To address these objectives, we have assembled a consortium that combines excellent strength in all areas from the systematic and accurate experimental determination of fluid properties through beyond-industry standard reservoir modeling to process optimization and flow assurance modeling. Our consortium also contains geothermal industry partners, on whose sites we will verify the accuracy of the toolsets. We will then incorporate these into open-access knowledge base for use and development across the industry. The geothermal industry will use these new tools to benefit from: the capability to better explore and ‘vector in’ on new resources; the ability to predict the return on a well more reliably for investment decisions; control-oriented simulations to reduce the engineering overkill currently required; improved energy extraction through knowledge of the real production constraints.

TWINVEST intends to create the foundations of a universal, open-source and cybersecure Digital Twin to provide investors in onshore wind farms valuable insights about current operations and future investments. Guide investment decisions in wind energy is a complex as it involves various factors to monitor or assess such as energy production, maintenance, investment framework and characteristics of the wind farm. In order to tackle those different factors, a team of 14 partners have united to create a Digital Twin that seamlessly integrates and considers all these factors. This Digital Twin will have different platforms: i) Framework investment conditions platform focuses on energy storage, energy demand and pricing dynamics, regulatory mechanisms, and the essential grid requisites for ancillary services; ii) Component to Farm platform, focused on different components used for the turbines nominal energy production CAPEX estimation of the investment; iii)Environment and Earth platform’s objective is to assess the impact of weather and wind dynamics, culminating in the provision of real-time energy production projections; and iv) Maintenance and risks platform aiming to optimize OPEX by leveraging predictive methodologies to anticipate potential system failures. The project duration will be 42 months and it will be structured in 3 stages: Stage 1: Platform and model development where the research partners will develop, train and explore different AI models that allows the investor to forecast and monitor essential factors in a wind farm Stage 2 (M6-M42): Digital Twin Integration, where the different mentioned platforms will be integrated ensuring the interoperability among all models; and Stage 3 (M25-M42): Individual Platforms and Digital Twin validation, where the TWINVEST Digital Twin will be validated with real wind energy farms from the industry and will be used to conduct feasibility studies on investment plans coming from industry to show its capabilities.