URBREATH vision is to develop, implement, demonstrate, validate and replicate a comprehensive, community participation and NBS-driven urban revitalisation, resilience and climate neutrality paradigm that will ultimately radically enhance the social interactions, inclusion, equitability and liveability in cities. Specifically, the aim of the URBREATH project is to implement hybrid/Natural Base Solutions putting at the heart of the decision-making process the communities within a city. Advanced techniques, particularly Local Digital Twins and AI, and social innovation will facilitate the achievement of its vision. The project will have four phases: 1. Inception, 2. Development, 3. Piloting, 4. Transition. The preliminary results of a single Phase are evaluated within the following Phase so to allow for feedback before releasing the final version. The Inception phase will define the methodology to be followed for the project development and will deliver the project functional and technical requirements. The second phase will release the URBREATH technical framework, consisting of tools to manage the whole data value chain and to support end-users to collaborate on the design and creation of NBS to be used in the city/district. It will be used to monitor and take decisions on the NBS to be implemented/deployed in the Piloting phase (evidence-based decision making), that involves 4 Front Runner Cities in 4 different climatic zones: Cluj-Napoca (RO - Continental), Leuven (BE – Atlantic), Madrid (ES – Mediterranean), and Tallin (EE – Boreal). During the Transition phase, all the information, results and lessons learnt from the previous steps will be collected and analysed to provide recommendations and foster replication activities and the uptake of project outputs at the end of its lifespan. To this aim, 5 Follower Cities are involved: Aarhus (DK), Athens (EL), Kajaani (FI), Parma (IT), Pilsen (CZ), linked to the Front Runners for climatic zone and/or dimension.

ICONIC is a forward-looking project designed to enhance energy independence, climate neutrality, and sustainable development in rural and island communities across Europe. Addressing the distinct socio-economic and environmental challenges of these areas, ICONIC deploys advanced technologies such as renewable energy systems, smart water management (solar-powered desalination, intelligent irrigation), off-grid biogas systems, and sustainable mobility solutions. These innovations are tested through real-world pilot demonstrations in Inis Mór (Ireland), La Graciosa (Spain), and Berchidda (Italy), where the project works closely with local stakeholders to co-design tailored solutions. ICONIC also fosters social innovation, emphasizing community engagement and multi-actor collaboration to ensure long-term sustainability. By promoting energy communities, circular economy practices, and peer-to-peer energy trading, the project strengthens local governance and empowers citizens to lead the transition to climate-neutrality. Digital platforms, including predictive analytics and digital twins, support integrated management of resources like energy, water, and mobility, enabling data-driven decision-making for both local authorities and residents. ICONIC's interdisciplinary approach contributes to various EU strategies, advancing the green and digital transitions in rural areas. By promoting social innovation, offering replicable models, and establishing a robust replication strategy, ICONIC ensures its impact extends beyond the pilot regions, providing a blueprint for rural and isolated communities across Europe and beyond. Through training programs, policy recommendations, and capacity-building workshops, ICONIC not only drives technological innovation but also fosters economic resilience and social equity, creating a more sustainable, inclusive, and climate-resilient future for rural communities.

While building on results of recently (or soon to be) concluded EU projects, NEON will undertake coordination and support activities to advance the leveraging technologies and concepts in order to deliver the next-generation integrated energy services for communities, targeted to enhance the life quality of European citizens, while improving the performance of energy system. In this endeavour, NEON will exploit building energy efficiency, renewable energy generation and storage, and demand flexibility to increase energy savings, reduce CO2 emissions, and provide cost savings across sectors. NEON will engage grid stakeholders, service providers and final consumers to establish, in co-creation, the cross-sectoral arrangements and underlying service concepts. NEON will join multi-measure energy efficiency interventions and advanced control capabilities to maximize the positive impact of energy efficiency by improving the building operation performance and make the demand-side flexibility as manageable and procurable resource. NEON will advance the energy efficiency services already available on the market and couple them with other energy services and non-energy benefits, providing an integrated approach to energy generation, storage and consumption management. To enable servitization of proposed concepts, NEON will bring innovative business and contracting models by integrating EPC with P4P schemes, and establish innovative M&V methodology. The concept of Citizen Energy Communities (CECs), as introduced by Directive (EU) 2019/944, will be leveraged to set the legal and business foundations to enable faster market uptake, and facilitate communities, both residential and non-residential, in becoming energy-efficient. The proposed service concepts and business models will be showcased in 4 CEC setups (residential, non-residential and mixed) serving as early adopters, whereby follow-up replication plans across 7 “follower” communities will be developed during the project.

LIGHTNESS will increase the Renewable Energy hosting capacity, to securely achieve the EU target for 2030, by supporting the market uptake of Citizen Energy Communities through a turnkey social engagement, regulatory roadmap, low-cost technological package and innovative business models to unlock the full flexibility potential, reduce the final energy consumption and CO2 emissions and bring economic, social and environmental benefits to the communities and across the energy value chain. LIGHTNESS solution will elaborate and execute ambitious end users engagement plans for the involved sites with continuous iterations and solution adaptation to achieve a direct engagement of +500 households and +30 tertiary buildings and an immediate replication potential to over 70.000 persons. LIGHTNESS solution will create digital twins for holistic assessment of 5 CECs case studies across 5 countries to be then deployed and monitored. Case studies consist in an energy cooperative (ES), a social housing building (PL), a private multi-apartment building (IT), a business park (FR) and 2 CECs to uphold the interaction among them (NL). The different regulatory and policy frameworks will allow to exchange best practices and providing road maps for the authorities. Overall, LIGHTNESS will engage +3000 end users, professionals, policy makers in EU, will consent a minimum 25% increase of renewable hosting capacity by making available up to 20% of flexibility in peak times from residential and tertiary buildings, will reduce up to 30% the Prosumers and CECs energy cost and up to 30% of CAPEX and OPEX costs for DSOs. LIGHTNESS has received the support from 59 organisations from which we can highlight EPEX-Spot, STEDIN, LIANDER, ACCIONA, VEOLIA, BAM, 10 EU cities, 9 energy agencies, 9 energy cooperatives, and 3 extra EU replicators from India, Turkey and Africa/America.The project management structure is gender balanced with two women and two men serving in the positions of responsibility.