Projects List

Deep demonstrations are central part of EIT Climate-KIC’s Transformation strategy. Deep Demonstrations start with a demand-led approach, working with organisations willing to take on the responsibility of acting as ‘challenge owners’: cities, regions, communities, governments or industry leaders committed to zero net emissions, resilient futures.
Once EIT CKIC has selected the initial JT DD, all of them will require additional supporting systems and a collaborative knowledge generation and transfer strategy. ALC suggests to incorporate a collaborative Developmental Evaluation process that will support the design, implementation (with the capacity to incorporate real time adaptations), evaluation and knowledge transfer capabilities of the DD. This process should have the capacity to asses both the formal process (needs, opportunities, prototypes, performance and impact indicators) and the cultural dimension of this transition (perceptions and belief systems that condition strategic decisions expressed through collective narratives).
Instead of conducting a traditional evaluation and internal communication system, this proposal suggests an interconnected developmental evaluation system for the JT DD, designed to create new qualitative and quantitative indicators and measuring tools that help us visualize the real impact generated by the demonstrators, running in parallel more traditional impact evaluation systems provided by the Challenge Owners.
At the top of the coarse metrics that are usually carried out (level of participation, generated information, number of implemented initiatives, number of benefiting people…), we suggest researching the interaction of old and new metrics and incorporating adaptive evaluation. We will consider quantitative, qualitative and financial metrics.
In specific terms, this Developmental Evaluation process will assess both the formal process (prototypes, performance and impact indicators) and the cultural dimension of the DDs.

An iterative process of internal analysis, deep listening, and self-reflection will enable each DD’s teams to understand the various levels of impact they are generating and what is enabling/impeding the desired change. This way of working will be a practical tool to generate new sensemaking capabilities in each DD. This process, conducted by a cooperative team formed by members of the 3 JT DDs, will also offer us the capability to better understand/integrate the cultural dimension of each context. Extracting the narratives/metanarratives, shared values and beliefs presents a more effective and non-disruptive alternative to the traditional transactional logics in project management. In addition to applying the same methodology and tools for developmental evaluation, that will allow us to share a common ground between the different DDs, we suggest that the 3 of them communicate and share the ongoing results of the internal evaluation process and extracted knowledge on a digital platform

This 3-year research project is led by the 2DII in partnership with WWF and the ADEME (French environmental agency) and the assistance of University Partners. It aims at developing a market research toolbox for investment products retailers. To establish and implement a scientific method to assess the sustainability investment objectives of individuals (retail investors, pension funds beneficiaries) and how the behavior of financial advisors affect their decisions, the team will implement behavioral finance field experiments, field visits and an online field experiment. Results will be used to estimate the demand for sustainable investment products and the behavioral barriers to investing into these products. The project is expected to provide methodological inputs and scientific evidence to support the implementation of the EC delegated acts on MIFID/IDD regulations that require financial advisors to ask about the sustainability preferences of their clients.

EU Climate Policy long term goals are aiming at cutting of GHG emissions by 80-95% compared to 1990 levels. This target strongly relies on higher RES decentralized energy production.
Nevertheless, in many cases, RES projects come across skepticism and resistance by local communities. At the same time, medium and big scale RES investments share limited benefits with local communities and deliver low social impact. Also, RES investments are failing to provide direct tangible solutions for tackling energy poverty – especially in urban areas.
In order to encourage the active involvement of local communities, tackle energy poverty and increase social acceptance of RES projects, the EU Renewable Energy Directive II introduced a new model, called “Renewable Energy Communities”. In countries, such as Greece, this directive has already been integrated into the national legal framework by passing the law 4513 (“Energy Communities”, 2018) – which also extends to community energy virtual-net metering for the first time in Europe. There are also some quantitative targets for community energy projects (“…at least 500MW to be generated by RES community energy projects by 2030”). RES community energy projects are implemented by local schemes in which citizens, local SMEs and local governments can actively participate as co-investors, co-owners and beneficiaries. The level of social acceptance of such projects is considerably high and their community-led approach results on strengthening social cohesion and creating social capital.
Still, there are several challenges that need to be addressed in order for the full potential of community energy to be unlocked. One of the key necessities is the development of a community energy model that will successfully balance between: From one hand- tackling energy poverty and increasing social acceptance and social cohesion. From the other hand – Becoming investment-ready, market-ready and economically viable.

The human-made monetary system in today’s shape is unsustainable by design and contributes to the deterioration of natural resources and human livelihoods in a systematic way as deterioration is considered as external to the system and ignored. The one-dimensional money system and its centralized control over money production and distribution supports vested interests in finance and politics while creating billions of unbanked humans. Ten years after the last of regular financial crashes and immense bailout programs, the root causes still exist: central banks run immense quantitative easing programs and push negative interest rate policies. This leads to artificially blown markets with artificially surviving companies and commercial banks. How does this help in any way to address the global climate emergency humanity is facing? What will happen after the next crash of this unstable system? How can we rethink the notion of value and money? How could a vision of a different monetary system look like? EXPOMONDES is EXploring the POstMONetary DEsign Space because the most crucial lever of change for climate mitigation is the monetary and financial system itself – and it remains largely uncontested and untouched.

EXPOMONDES starts from different vantage points: postmonetary conceptions for incentive systems exist and are increasingly viable because the necessary technology breakthroughs have happened (e.g. blockchain). The emerging field of cryptoeconomics allows to deisng, model and test entirely new conceptions of value metrics, instruments, and platforms. These new tools need to be exposed to some relevant domains to understand their potential to transform the deceasing financial system we still adhere to today.

The
united aim of Project X and Nutreco is to achieve procurement of alternative,
sustainable feed products at scale in the salmon and shrimp markets. This
translates to two specific FEED-X objectives (goals), to be achieved by July
2020: 1) Three scale-tested and validated alternative feed solutions are
market ready and being implemented at scale by Nutreco-Skretting as a test
case for industry. 2) Company adoption results and case study, including
expressions of interest from companies representing 10% of the salmon and
shrimp feed market have been provided. The project outcomes that will lead to
the achievement of these project objectives can be consolidated as follows:
1) Deep understanding of companies’ needs and abilities to adapt to apply
alternative feed solutions 2) Multi-stakeholder consultation and a clear
recommendation agreed on the top three alternative feed solutions categories
e.g. insects, algae 3) Most suitable market-ready (SME/Mid Corp) companies
per category are onboard and ready to test 4) Evidence of highest performing
alternative feed solutions 5) Evidence and assurance that highest performing
innovations can also deliver at scale 6) Evidence that broader Feed
Production Companies have expressed an interest in the demonstrated solutions
The impact of this programme is to advance transformation of climate-damaging
food value chains and enhance the climate resilience of food supply, via a
measurable improvement in the feed production industry value chain. Directly
contributing to the EIT Climate Impact Goal 5 on transforming food systems.

The regional Government of Andalusia, FIC, Tecnalia and Aquatec will co-design resilience roadmap to face the most relevant challenges that climate change implies to the region. The resilience roadmap will identify the needs of the territory and set the positions on which to develop a portfolio of resilience-innovative experiments oriented to catalyze climate change adaptation. Forging Resilience roadmap will be defined considering a demand led approach, working with problem owners and stakeholders set the basis to drive systemic change. Forging Resilience portfolio roadmap will be developed integrating a systemic risk management perspectives, considering relationships between sectors, value chains and impacts.
In a first phase, systemic change the scope, goals and vision will be established and secondly, problems will be framed and the roadmap will be defined identifying the innovation options, defining the portfolio design principles and determining which are the priorities regarding

We are submitting this proposal because we believe that climate risk is an existential threat to Europe. Impacts throughout 2018 were a stark reminder of the vulnerability and unpreparedness that Europe faces, with the most vulnerable bearing the highest costs. Yet current national and local systems for infrastructure governance will not build the climate resilient infrastructure systems Europe needs. Complex climate risks cannot be managed by single sectors and require clear delineations of responsibility to build resilience. While different instruments can be available at the local, sub-national and national levels, decisions about how climate risks are assessed and managed often suffer from structural governance failures, market inefficiencies and data unavailability. This needs to change if Europe wants to effectively protect its citizens.

Experience of attempting to integrate climate risks – both physical and economic – in existing infrastructure governance systems has demonstrated that this requires fundamental institutional reforms rather than incremental policy change. Reforms need to be implemented rapidly to avoid the next generation of infrastructure having “vulnerability built-in” risking trillions of dollars of value at risk and very high levels of development and social impacts.

We believe this project will ultimately lead to a “just resilience “ set of policy, institutional and financing activities that will go beyond technical and project-based approaches to adaptation and improve broader societal resilience through transformational change.

The project, which follows a Pathfinder EIT Climate-KIC funding in 2017, aims at developing an innovative and integrative platform based both on (1) latest remote sensing tools and cutting edge modeling combined with outreaching, integrating, and (2) balanced stakeholder engagement and participation approaches for the elaboration of restoration action plan at a landscape level. The FORLAND Restoration platform will allow for an optimal planning and decision-making process of landscape restoration
projects, by combining both production and protection purposes while using multiple metrics (e.g., carbon sequestration, natural capital/ecosystem services values, financial return). Stakeholder engagements are crucial to this project and thus, it will ensure a diversity of participants to best represent each study site.
The Demonstrator project is therefore strongly linked to the Impact Goals 4 (make agriculture climatesmart), 6 (nurture forests in integrated landscapes), and 9 (reboot regional economies). This last Impact Goal will be achieved through FORLAND’s contribution to the development of an integrated landscape management approach, by optimizing environmental, social, climatic and sustainable economic criteria, by bringing together stakeholders from the entire value chain.

Our aim is to design a policy simulation as a platform for free experimentation around systemic levers and a collaborative tool for dynamically testing different ideas for a more sustainable future economy.

Policy simulations offer a combination of scenario building and game-like mechanisms. In this activity, a group of diverse stakeholders meet in a room and is assigned roles appropriate to the challenge. Within the limitations of the simulation, they collaboratively address emerging problems, test strategies and face the consequences. Thus, regular impediments to experimenting that stem from the uncertainty, fear of mistake or time delays can be eliminated.

The simulation will be tested as a tool for introducing changes in institutions and policies in an interactive, yet controlled environment. It is followed by a debriefing, during which the participants examine their choices in a more holistic way, connecting the changes they made during the simulation to the underlying mindset and values that influence their decisions. The collaborative form of the simulation allows for simplifying the complex language of financial systems and democratizing the decision-making process, facilitating collective action.
The project takes place mostly in the Frame phase and relies upon collaboration, its content linked to the overarching progress and based on information from co-designers’ Input phase. The tested policy simulation will be used to provide methodological guidance on how such tools can then be used in the Portfolio phase.

The two main goals for the project are:
-Testing the policy simulation as a tool for conducting specific experiments with policies that could be combined into a more sustainable and long-term focused financial system
-Testing policy simulations as methods for developing futures literacy – building such a capability could contribute to empowering the participants, who can learn how to apply their ideas to improve the systems they live in.

The Avoided Emissions Framework (‘AEF’) aims to become established as a de-facto standard for innovation assessments and acceleration for climate solutions. This AEF project aims to identify over 1,000 solutions using the framework developed during the project. Many of these solutions are products/services launched onto the market in the countries supporting Mission Innovation and will be available to a wide variety of customers across different sectors.

Mission Innovation (MI) is a global initiative of 24 countries and the EU, launched at COP21, with the aim to dramatically accelerate innovation in clean energy, reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and encourage greater private sector investment. At the MI 3rd Ministerial meeting in 2018, it was agreed to develop a Framework for Assessing Avoided Emissions. The project was launched in 2018, and in 2019 started to establish itself among a wide selection of international stakeholders. In 2020, MI will be in the final year of its first 5-year period, providing an opportunity for the AEF to be showcased as a flagship MI initiative.

Almost all current major climate related initiatives in the financial sector have 3 characteristics:
1. focus on how big emitters can reduce emissions
2. focus on incremental improvements in existing structures
3. aim to encourage any kind of reduction, often resulting in lock-in situations.

Initiatives, frameworks and tools with these characteristics include GHG Protocol, GRI, CDP, Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), emissions trading systems, etc. Such initiatives played an important role to put climate change on the mainstream business agenda, but new approaches are needed to accelerate change. AEF enables this change, by guiding investors and funders, including cities, to assess investments in new technologies and solutions that have the potential to dramatically reduce GHG emissions, but also be compatible IPCC 1.5 °C pathways.

The Friendly Fruit project follows two main aims: 1)to set up, test and assess for the impact of innovative environment-friendly agricultural practices; 2)to identify, organize and set up the appropriate structure in the long term to define, promote &implement these practices in various regions . Strawberry and apple fruit production have been chosen as a test case.
Its purpose is to test, study the impact and transfer good environmental practices on apple and strawberry. It is coordinated by INRA and brings together several academic participants representing different disciplines (Environment, agronomy, physiology, plant breeding and genetics, …), experimental centers, as well as food-processing industries Based on the latest advances in research and experimentation, Friendly Fruit will implement innovative and environmentally friendly farming practices to better manage biodiversity and implement alternative approaches to plant protection products, improve water, fertilization and carbon management in the soil, reduce greenhouse gases. These practices will be implemented in Europe and Morocco. The final aim is to find the best tools and/or organization to maintain the knowledge created during the project and effectively and sustainably share it with the stakeholders.

Future Cities of South East Europe is a multi-annual KAVA that started in 2019 and will continue through 2022. This project develops process innovation in pursuit of the mission of zero-carbon city communities by 2030. The customers will be the citizens of these cities and other cities wanting to emulate this approach. This project targets the social innovation processes that are needed to bring about transformative change in cities, to deliver the unharnessed benefits that technology already offers. This responds to the needs expressed by city communities for better integration, the right type of investment at scale, more collaboration and stronger governance. In other words, a radically different and more innovative way of cross-community working is the innovation most needed. The consortium is aiming to evidence launch of this process innovation on the market during 2021.

The Future Cities of South East Europe Initiative (SEE), is a collaborative initiative led-by Maribor, Sarajevo, Skopje, Krişevci and Niš to deliver on the ambitious mission of: An inclusive, prosperous and zero-carbon transformation of 15 city neighborhoods in 5-7 cities in South East Europe, making these into some of the best possible places in Europe to live, work and visit by 2025.

By leading with a shared vision and acknowledging what is required of us, we will backcast a set of actions and systems-scale sign posts that lead us toward this future and ensure our communities thrive in the coming decades. We are committed to acting fast to implement policies, projects, and processes that:
i) bring air quality to within WHO recommended limits
ii) ensure that all members of these city communities have equitable access to the fundamentals of wellbeing
iii) achieve circular and net-zero greenhouse gas emission economies
iv) reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts.

The Deep Demonstrations program seeks to innovate to produce transformations which will radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the transformativeness of disruptive inventions are indiscernible in advance and processes of innovation benefit from skills aimed at thriving in the unknown. Futures Literacy is a capability that is central to cultivating the conditions for whole system transformations. It is defined as being able to use the future in different ways for different purposes. It supports personal and organizational willingness and confidence to experiment outside familiar past expectations and find new ways to make sense of emergent potentials. A core premise of Futures Literacy is that the futures we imagine contours what we perceive and do. FLxDeep aims to support the development of futures literacy among EIT Climate KIC Deep Demonstrations actors to gain new insights regarding how Futures Literacy contributes to transformative innovation processes. In 2020, FLxDeep will design, implement and prototype processes integrated to the work of the Deep Demonstrations that continues introducing the need for this skill to new groups and going deeper into developing the skill.

Futures Literacy as a capability is central to cultivating the conditions needed for transformation — the willingness to experiment outside familiar past expectations and, critically, to find new ways to make sense of emerging novelty. Being locked into only one or few ways of imagining the future impedes perception, invention, and action. Developing Futures Literacy, by enlarging why and how of imaginary futures which are fundamental constituents of what we see and do, makes it easier to expand the exercise of human agency to include both spontaneous, improvisation and a willingness to embrace the uncertain and unknowable potentials of discontinuity and transformative innovation.

On December 2018, the European Union approved the first part of a comprehensive legislative package entitled ‘Clean Energy for all Europeans- CEP’ that put in place appropriate legal frameworks to enable the energy transition and give a special role to citizens and communities activities introducing the Energy Community into the regulatory framework.
Even if CEP will be transposed into national laws by March 2020, some experiences of energy communities have been already implemented across Europe. Nevertheless, the CEP legal framework introduce a new paradigm in the energy sector and pilot projects should be implemented to assess the legal, administrative, social and technological impacts of the Energy Communities. In this contest the Green Energy COmmunity (GECO) of Pilastro-Roveri aims to anticipate the implementation of the EU Legislation by CEP, before the national transposition, experimenting a energy community, that increases the generation and self-consumption of renewable energy, support the local community’s economy and address key issues by exploring green opportunities in the energy market.
The project seeks to define and experiment the GECO entity and develop activities in order to increase the usage of renewable energy locally produced and balance the grid, to implement innovative solutions for the integration of renewable energy sources in the national grid, supported by artificial intelligence, high-quality demand-side management and storage technologies, and to provide services like voltage balancing control, congestion management, flexible load and peak demand shaving, energy saving.
GECO project will be embedded in the national regulatory framework, providing support to the national stakeholders (GSE, Terna, SRE and Emilia Romagna Region) as experiment project to address the national legislation development and it will attract potential members among the district stakeholders: citizens, private/pub organitions, associations and university.

Today, environmental footprint data for agricultural production systems is scattered and incomplete. GeoFootprint aims to set up and deploy a computation engine for the automatised calculation of such environmental footprints using the latest LCA methodologies and accounting for site-specific parameters such as soil type, climate, agricultural practices (yield, fertiliser inputs, irrigation and land management practices, etc.). It will cover main agricultural commodities worldwide and several environmental impact indicators of relevance. On the front-end of this engine, a user-friendly web interface will help visualise these footprints for any location in the world, and for various geographical scales (from 10×10 km to country level). With GeoFootprint, the amount of available footprint data for agricultural crops will be drastically increased, and consistently computed using the latest available spatial data and models (from satellite imagery, remote sensing and agronomic models).

More specifically, the GeoFootprint platform focuses on achieving the following objectives:
• the development and evaluation of a computational regionalization engine that facilitates a seamless integration of all relevant spatial data into environmental footprinting.
• the development and evaluation of a Land Use Change (LUC) calculation module which allows the operationalization of the Climate-KIC funded LUC guidance on various level of details, i.e. statistical-LUC on the country-level and site-specific LUC under consideration of farm locations.
• the development and evaluation of a Land use (LU) calculation module which allows to monitor and model the effect of different types of LU or management practices on soil organic carbon (SOC).
• the development and evaluation of a web-based platform which facilitates the user-friendly access and advanced (re)-modeling of high-resolution footprinting data.

We are creating systemic change in an urban environment and transform the historic inner city neighborhood of Amsterdam, including the universally known Red Light District, into a sustainable ‘Green Light District’. Together with the Green Light District foundation we will demonstrate our bottom-up approach, which we could scale and market to other historic inner cities across Europe. Our philosophy: if the historic city of Amsterdam can be sustainable, all neighborhoods can be! With a strong consortium of problem owners, citizens, municipality and experts on sustainability we will transform this densely populated and visited square kilometer of Europe into a future proof, sustainable and prosperous area. We will activate the community and co-create numerous projects, including four iconic sustainable building renovations.

THIS IS NOT FOR PUBLISHING

This is a direct Commission for Christina Paci’s role to allow a smooth continuation of the activities of the DD HCC Milano across 2020.
Christina is employed by the Municipality of Milano with the task of project manager, i.e. she is managing the activities of the Municipality in the DD HCC Milano. In particular Christina will:
o support to the coordination and management of the project activities of the municipality;
o monitor the progress of the project activities, preparing and presenting the reports within the set deadlines;
o coordinate the organization of the stakeholder and citizen engagement campaign aimed at raising awareness of institutional subjects and citizenship on decarbonisation and climate mitigation policies related to the DD HCC Milano;
o manage the communications with project partners and with the Climate-KIC community,
o manage the administrative and financial aspects of the project;
o participate in project meetings both locally and internationally;
o support the preparation of documents and reports in English.

Please note that this PLAZA ID is closely related to the project 200312 “Milan – Deep demonstration of Healthy, Clean Cities”, KAVA 2.1.4

This project wants to create at least one Insurance scheme to improve forest resilience to extreme climate events.



An intensification of extreme meteorological phenomena like huge windstorms or extreme rain or fire events is occurring worldwide. This affects soil and hydrogeological protection, agricultural and forest ecosystem services (including sink function, production and biodiversity), infrastructures and urban territories and sustainability of local communities, compromising the territories capability to play their part in climate change mitigation. The 2018 windstorms highlighted Alpine areas fragility. The economic costs fall on the shoulders of public stakeholders which in turn affect the investments on land management such as in forest resilience and adapta on measures. Local communities are not prepared to face extreme conditions. After the extreme event, stakeholders wait for public intervention to re-establish previous conditions highlighting the need to rethink in a holistic way the management of these territories allowing investments for more resilient landscapes with a systemic approach capable to enable risk-informed decision and planning holistic de-risking. This should start from the involvement of the key public and private problem-owners, industrial and productive compartments, the evalua on of selected ESS, the mapping and management of natural hazards for prevention purposes and focus on the insurance instruments that reduce the negative effects of extreme events. Citizen

Participation and involvement of social actors is crucial to create resilient communities that adapt both their relationship with natural environment and their position in the economic/market panorama. This can be achieved by developing dedicated insurance schemes that merge the stability of ESS. This approach can be replicated and scaled in metropolitan, urban and peri-urban areas. Three ESS dimensions will be considered: Production, Protection, Recreation. Interactions between insurance companies and problem owners will be used to identify one (or more) specific Insurance schemes

The project aims to develop a new approach that starting from the involvement of all the public and private stakeholders, industrial and productive compartments, the evaluation of selected ESS (Ecosystem ServiceS), the mapping and management of natural hazards for prevention purposes, focus on the insurance instruments that can help to reduce the negative effects of extraordinary events and promote resilience.