Alliance for Energy Cooperation in European Industries

New Alliance for Energy Cooperation in European Industries created

● The Alliance has been set by five Horizon 2020 projects: EMB3Rs, INCUBIS, R-ACES, SO WHAT and S PARCS, which together have received a total of €14.5 million in funding from the European Commission.

● The main goal of the alliance is to maximise the projects’ impact and improve the quality and relevance of their outputs, ultimately contributing to boost energy efficiency, waste heat recovery, and energy cooperation in the European industries.

Brussels, Belgium, 13 April 2021; Five European projects working on waste heat recovery and industrial energy cooperation have joined forces and created an Alliance for Energy Cooperation in European Industries, setting up a common collaboration agreement that seeks to maximise their impact and improve the quality and the relevance of their outputs.

The establishment of the cooperation was completed on 7 March, with the approval of the “Letter of Intent of Energy Cooperation in European Industries”, during an online meeting. The five initiatives forming it, EMB3Rs, INCUBIS, R-ACES, SoWHat and S-PARCS, are funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and together they combine the efforts of 64 unique partners across 18 European countries, which have received a total of €14.5 Million in funding. The collaboration began back in November 2020, with a joint online workshop on waste heat recovery and energy cooperation in European industries. Further joint activities will include the cross-validation of public project outputs and joint communication, dissemination, and training actions.

The next public upcoming action is the participation in a joint workshop that the S-PARCS partners are organising as part of this project’s final event. The five initiatives will work together in a co-creation session to define the main barriers they have identified in the valorisation of excess heat/cold and energy symbiosis. After this workshop, the partners plan to invite stakeholders to contribute with further input, which will set the basis for a policy brief with guidelines on how to boost energy efficiency, waste heat recovery, and energy cooperation in the European industries.

EMB3Rs (User-driven Energy Matching & Business Prospection Tool for Industrial Excess Heat / Cold Reduction, Recovery and Redistribution; Grant Agreement N° 847121) is investigating the potential of recovering industrial excess heat and cold and designing a platform that explores how energy normally wasted by releasing it into the environment could be reused as a valuable source for other industrial processes, district heating, and cooling or further purposes.

INCUBIS (An Energy Symbiosis Incubator for Maximizing Energy Efficiency in Industrial Parks and Districts; Grant Agreement Nº 894800) will develop a set of tools and support services to help key stakeholders in Industrial Parks and Districts in the development and implementation of Energy Symbiosis projects. Energy Symbiosis involves the use of the excess heat/cold produced by one or more industries, to provide heating, cooling, or electricity for other industries or buildings. INCUBIS will deliver its tools and services through the Virtual Incubator model, supporting and building capacity in key organizations that are ideally
positioned to facilitate Energy Symbiosis projects and drive the project development process.

R-ACES (fRamework for Actual Cooperation on Energy on Sites and Parks; Grant Agreement Nº 892429) is supporting industrial clusters and business parks in becoming ecoregions that reduce their CO2 emissions by at least 10%. To achieve this, ecoregions are created where multiple stakeholders engage in energy cooperation by exchanging heat/cold streams, investing together in renewable energy solutions, or managing energy streams through smart energy management platforms. R-ACES is further drawing on and combining the knowledge and experience gathered throughout H2020 into a set of three specific
tools embedded in selected support actions: an assessment tool, legal decision support for joint contracts, and the smart energy management platform for clusters.

SoWHat (Supporting new Opportunities for Waste Heat And cold valorisation Towards EU Decarbonization; Grant Agreement Nº 847097) is developing an integrated software to identify and simulate how industrial WH/C could cost-effectively balance with the local community’s forecasted energy demand, and how this could be integrated with renewable energy systems. The tool, designed to support different stakeholders in auditing and mapping their energy processes, will assess the impact of energy processes on both a technical and non-technical level and help to reduce the cost of energy audits. This will be validated by 11 demonstration sites that will test the software in real operating conditions in industrial facilities.

S-PARCS (Envisioning and Testing New Models of Sustainable Energy Cooperation and Services in Industrial Parks; Grant Agreement Nº 785134) presents a sound concept for reducing energy costs and energy consumption in industrial parks, while, at the same time, increasing renewable on-site energy production. It aims at moving from a single-company energy-efficient intervention approach to cooperative energy-efficient solutions, enabling higher energy savings and the subsequent increase of competitiveness of the companies located in the parks. S-PARCS will systematically analyse technical, economic, regulatory, legal, organisational, environmental, and social barriers to energy-efficient park design and operation on all levels and will provide innovative, market-ready solutions to overcome them.

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The SO WHAT tool presented in the Digital Solutions for Industry webinar

The SO WHAT Project coordinator RINA hosted a webinar entitled Digital Solutions for Industry on February 22, 2021.

The session showcased different innovative digital solutions that are being used or developed by four different European research projects: SHIP2FAIRSO WHATRETROFEED and ECOFACT, which tackle different steps of the value chain.

You can watch the recording in the video below!

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Successful Intermediate Review for So What

The SO WHAT project is on the right track! That was the overall conclusion from the review meeting that we held on February 23 with our Project Officer and the European Commission representatives.

Over 18 months, the consortium members have worked hard to research and leverage previous existing knowledge and an already existing tool, to set up the basis for the development of the SO WHAT integrated tool.

The software has now entered the development phase, and later it will be tested across the different demo sites that are active part of the project.

The tool is expected to support industries and energy utilities in simulating and comparing alternative Waste Heat and Waste Cold (WH/C) technologies, and simulate how to balance the local forecasted Heat and Cold demand and supply, including renewable energy sources integration.

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The SoWhat tool to be presented in the webinar Digital Solutions for Industry

The So What Project coordinator RINA is hosting a webinar entitled Digital Solutions for Industry on February 22, 2021, from 11:00 to 12:30 (CET).

The session will showcase different innovative digital solutions that are being used or developed by four different European research projects: SHIP2FAIR, SO WHAT, RETROFEED and ECOFACT, which tackle different steps of the value chain.

In particular, the following solutions will be presented:

  • the SHIP2FAIR Replication Tool that supports the design phase of solar heat technology in industrial processes and the development of techno-economic feasibility studies;
  • the SO WHAT Integrated Tool that supports industries and energy utilities in selecting, simulating and comparing alternative waste heat and waste cold exploitation technologies for the heat and cold processes demand reduction;
  • the tool that allowed to carry out the RETROFEED industrial sites energy audits even during the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdown;
  • the ECOFACT platform built in a multi-service approach providing an innovative holistic combination of functionalities for advanced energy-efficient, sustainable process / product design and manufacturing management.

The webinar is open to all European and worldwide industrial players, as well as researchers, representatives of companies, associations, actors in the manufacturing sector.

Register in this link and discover with us the innovative digital solutions for industry!

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So What project up and running!

We finally kicked off our So What project on June 4 and 5! For 36 months we will be working hard to achieve the goals expected for this project.

On the picture you can see that there were many people attending the meeting, hosted by IESVE at the Gran Canal hotel in Dublin (Ireland).

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So What project, Supporting new Opportunities for Waste Heat And cold valorisation Towards EU decarbonization

The SO WHAT project (acronym for Supporting new Opportunities for Waste Heat And cold valorisation Towards EU decarbonization) main objective is to develop and demonstrate an integrated software which will support industries and energy utilities in selecting, simulating and comparing alternative Waste Heat and Waste Cold (WH/C) exploitation technologies that could cost-effectively balance the local forecasted Heat&Cold demand also via renewable energy sources (RES) integration.

The SO WHAT integrated tool will be designed to support industries, and energy utilities in:

1) auditing the industrial process to understand where WH/WC could be valorised

2) mapping the potential of locally available RES sources to be integrated with WH/WC potential

3) mapping the local forecasted demand for heating and cooling

4) define and simulate alternative cost-effective scenarios based on WH/WC technologies also leveraging TES introduction

5) evaluate the impacts (in terms of energetic, economic and environmental KPIs) that the adoption of the new scenarios will generate against the current situation (i.e., baseline) both at industrial and local level

6) promoting innovative contractual arrangements and financing models to guarantee economically viable solutions and less risky investments.

To do so SO WHAT will capitalize already existing tool and knowledge from previous research experiences (REEMAIN, PLANHEAT, REUSEHEAT, CELSIUS…) and the expertise of 11 industrial validation sites from different REII/ non-REII sectors (petrochemical, chemical, metallurgic, food etc.) that will be involved in

the project to validate the tool and provide relevant insights for its development. SOWHAT tool will be built indeed following a participatory approach involving both National clusters from Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Sweden, Romania (composed by local industries, public authorities/energy agencies, energy utilities/ESCOs) and external stakeholder since the very beginning of the development in order to have a wide, clear and structured promotion of WH/C also thanks to a robust training campaign and policy oriented dissemination actions.

The So What consortium is formed by 20 partners coming from 9 different European countries.