Edition no. 10, 2016
Platform
SPIRE Knowledge Platform: Online Brokerage activities








We are pleased to inform our members that the old SPIRE members' portal has been migrated to a new SPIRE Knowledge platform. A.SPIRE members are welcome to visit the area called SPIRE Tools which allows the following online interactions:
  • Creating and sharing your expertise or possible contribution to an existing project proposal
  • Creating and sharing your project ideas
  • Searching for funding programmes relevant to process industries
Whenever an expertise or project idea is introduced on the platform, an automated check is performed within existing submissions of expertise/project ideas and an alert is sent to the author in case they match. 
We encourage you to use this tool and hope this will help you finding partners and ideas for your project proposals!  
projects
MefCO2 successfully starts its third year
November 30th, 2016 was the last day of the second year of MefCO2 project. All milestones and deliverables have been successfully accomplished and MefCO2 partners are almost ready to start the installation of the different test rigs in the pilot plant located in Germany during the following 18 months.   
During the last months the project dissemination plan has been actively followed and several activities such as workshops, conferences and internet exposure carried out, always bearing in mind the three different elements which compose the plan: 1) the message or idea-force, that is, the basic idea that the project's consortium wants to communicate or release to a wide audience, 2) the audience of such message and finally, 3) the means used to perform such communication activities. The four different audiences to be approached by MefCO2 are the following:   
  1. Scientific community,
  2. Incumbent industries and SMEs,
  3. Venture capitalists and,
  4. Public in general.
Targeting the scientific community and incumbent industries, both Carbon Recycling International (CRI) and Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Europe (MHPSE) attended SCANMET V in Lulea (Sweden), the 5th International Conference on Process Development in Iron and Steelmaking where Carbon Recycling for Converting Coke Oven Gas to Methanol for the Reduction of Carbon Dioxide at Steel Mills was presented.
In October 2016, Hydrogenics (HYGS) attended I-SUP 2016 in Antwerp (Belgium) and contributed to the CCU section whit its Electrolytic hydrogen generation in carbon re-utilizations schemes presentation in which MefCO2 and the electrolyser to be integrated in the pilot plant was introduced. In this case, the scientific community, incumbent industries and SMEs were approached by HYGS as well as the public in general.
MefCO2 was also present in 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting which took place in San Francisco (USA). The project was represented by The National Institute of Chemistry (NIC) who gave a presentation on the scientific activities entitled Mechanism, Reaction Kinetics and Multi-Scale Modelling of CO2 Hydrogenation to Methanol over Trimetallic Heterogeneous Catalysts.
Lastly I-DEALS, as project coordinator, attended the European Utility Week 2016 . MefCO2 counted on a booth within the Energy Revolution Europe area representing this way a natural link with the existing focus on renewable integration and energy storage. Several meetings were arranged during the event, utilities, researches, SMEs and students. Previous events attended by the project coordinator had a specific focus on venture capitalists, however, the EUW has led MefCO2 to approach incumbent industries and SMEs but also to the public in general.

EPOS Insights: first results of the project
 
  • Insights #1: It summarises the investigation of both the potential for industrial symbiosis in Europe, and the main requirements by local managers for implementing symbiotic initiatives.
  • Insights #2: This contribution details the preliminary technical as well as non-technical SWOT analysis on a selection of five European clusters in view of their potential for cross-sectorial collaboration.
  • Insights #3: Discover with this insight the long list of metrics and system settings selected via a joint effort of process industries and academia in view of enabling the development of an integrated industrial symbiosis methodology. 
  • Insights #4: This insight summarises the data collection process carried out in the EPOS sites & clusters in order to build data capacity and knowledge per sector, and setting a common sector reference situation. 
  • Insights #5: This insight focuses on the history, scope and growth of the Dunkirk cluster, located in the North of France. 
RESYNTEX: A New Circular Economy Concept for Textiles and Chemicals
RESYNTEX (WASTE1-2014 project) aims to create a new circular economy concept for the textile and chemical industries. The project started work in June 2015. Through an innovative recycling approach and industrial symbiosis, RESYNTEX will transform textile waste into secondary raw materials, creating circularity and reducing environmental impact. 

In September, European textile waste and chemical industry experts were brought together at RESYNTEX's Experts Workshop on Textile Waste Situation & Textile Waste-to-chemical Scenarios. The Brussels event was organised by  project partners   Cefic  and  EURATEX EURATEX and Oakdene Hollins presented an overview of the textile waste situation in Europe. The estimate made by  Oakdene Hollins  is that 80,000 tons of residual waste are generated in the European Union per year.  RESYNTEX  can use up to 50,000 tons from this waste stream.
External experts shared their experience on textile waste and recycling in their own countries:
  • Only 32.5% of used household linen and footwear is collected for reuse or recycling in France, stated Eco TLC
  • 90,000 tons of textile waste is collected in the Netherlands each year and it should increase 50% by 2020 according to Alcon Advies and Texperium
  • Over 120,000 tons of used textile were recycled in Belgium, showed a report from COBEREC
  • Only 3,000 tons of textile waste are separately collected in the Czech Republic and only 3% is recycled per year, stated INOTEX Ltd.
The participants agreed that RESYNTEX has a great value for all sectors involved and the wider circular economy too.

H2020
Horizon 2020 Mid-Term Review: Public Stakeholders Consultation
The European Commission launched the Public Stakeholder Consultation on the Mid-term Review. It will run until 15 January 2017 and its results will feed into the report on the interim evaluation, with the aim to help improving the implementation of Horizon 2020, setting the scene for the discussion on the future framework programme.

Submit your contribution!
jti
Role and effect of JTIs and PPPs in implementing Horizon 2020 for sustainable industrial change
The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has recently adopted an opinion on the Role and effect of JTIs and PPPs in implementing Horizon 2020 for sustainable industrial change.  In this opinion the EESC urges that JTIs and cPPPs be put in place in order to:
  • boost coherence with other partnerships and initiatives on a scene increasingly crowded with concurrent policies;
  • extend the value chain with a sharper focus on the market and broader participation from the demand side in terms of both numbers of users in the countries involved and new actors throughout the value chain, making use of the synergies generated by interoperability with other initiatives;
  • give greater prominence to multidisciplinary approaches, bringing in new stakeholder communities, especially at local, grassroots level.
The EESC proposes setting up a European Innovation Council with strong representation of industry and society, with pan-European infrastructure networks to support innovation, as a useful instrument for closer coordination of initiatives, not least with the courses of action of other European and international R&I organisations, and with comparable international partnerships.  The EESC calls upon the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council to work together to hold an interinstitutional conference as soon as possible on the role of public-private technology partnerships in European reindustrialisation, with a view to the next R&I Framework Programme after 2020.
  
Check out the full text of the opinion
Highlevel
High Level Group on maximising impact of EU Research and Innovation Programmes
The European Commission has set up a High Level Group of experts who will advise on how to maximise the impact of the EU's investment in research and innovation. The group will be chaired by Pascal Lamy, President Emeritus of the Jacques Delors Institute. The group will start its work in December 2016 and is expected to issue its report in June 2017.
The High Level Group will base its report, among others on:
  • the available Horizon 2020 interim evaluation results and factual evidence;
  • the results of a European foresight exercise for future research and innovation policy;
  • an assessment of the economic rationale for public research and innovation investment and its expected impact on jobs and growth.
sealofex
'Seal of Excellence' one year on
Since its launch in October 2015, more than 3000 small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have received the Seal of Excellence, the EU's quality label marking first-class innovative ideas worthy of investment.  The initiative was  announced  a year ago by Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, and Corina Cretu, European Commissioner for Regional Policy, at the European Week of Regions and Cities in Brussels.  The Seal is designed to maximise synergies between EU funds available for innovative companies, including under Horizon 2020, the EU's research and innovation funding programme, and the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF).

The Seal is awarded to those proposals that have successfully passed the stringent selection and award criteria under Horizon 2020, but could not be funded under the available call budget. By recognising the high quality of these projects, the Seal acknowledges the effort of excellent SMEs and serves as a potential route to alternative funding, including ESIF.

GA
A.SPIRE General Assembly
The A.SPIRE General Assembly took place on the 23rd of November.  Klaus Sommer, A.SPIRE President,   Loredana Ghinea, A.SPIRE Executive Director  guided the A.SPIRE community through the advancements of the SPIRE PPP, priorities and   expectations for 2017.  Ignacio Martin, newly appointed chair of the SPIRE Industrial R&I Advisory Group, gave a deeper perspective on the 2016 activities.  Jose Lorenzo Valles (DG RTD) provided a political overview on the PPP instrument and on the way forward and emphasized that the European Commission acknowledges the importance of SPIRE PPP for the industrial competitiveness in Europe. 

Bratislava
Re-Industrialisation of the European Union 2016
The process established by the 2016 Dutch and Slovak Presidencies of the Council of the European Union asserts the following key pillars of Reindustrialising Europe:

1. Focusing on distinctive European innovations, including disruptive innovations;
2. Fostering talent and skills for innovation;
3. Bridging the innovation divide in Europe;
4. Developing a common ecosystem for re-industrialising Europe;
5. Improving quality of life, protection of human health and the environment.

Read more about Bratislava Agenda
Events
Upcoming events
  • Kick-off Event of the Greek National Technology Platform (NTP) on Sustainable Chemistry, 16 December 2016, Athens, Greece. More info...
  • ARTEMIS Brokerage Event, 31 January - 1 February 2017, Brussels, Belgium. More info...
  • CLIB International Conference: Performance products via game-changing technologies, 18-19 January 2017, Düsseldorf, Germany. More info...
  • First Stakeholder Forum for the "Digitising European Industry" initiative, 31 January - 1 February 2017, Essen, Germany. More info... 
  • INTERACT Industrial Workshop on Innovative Materials and Technologies for CO2 Capture, 12 January 2017, Leverkusen, Germany. More info...
  • Challenges for Mathematical Modeling, Simulation and Optimization for Advanced Process Control of Batch Processes, 9-10 February, Heidelberg, Germany. More info...
  • MORE project Final Workshop: Real-time Monitoring and Optimization of Resource Efficiency - From Measurements to Optimal Operation, 15-16 February, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. More info...
Happy holidays from SPIRE!

 

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