Project description
Connecting stakeholders and sharing knowledge to boost Hubs4Circularity
Hubs4Circularity (H4C) are socio-technical ecosystems for full-scale industrial (urban) symbiosis and circular economy closing energy, resource and data loops at regional scale. They are an important building block for achieving the 2050 climate neutrality targets. The EU-funded H4C Europe project’s key mission is to set up a Community of Practice to connect H4C initiatives as well as actors from industry, regions, cities and R&D organisations. Interested parties connect through an established knowledge platform as well as during workshops and events to share knowledge, experiences, tools and materials. Overall, the project will facilitate building, scaling-up and replicating H4C ecosystems. Moreover, it will help progress faster towards industrial (urban) symbiosis and circular value chains.
Objective
H4C Europe project will create a European Community of Practice (ECoP). It will provide a community, knowledge platform, and exchange structures that will help the existing and future hubs in creation, management, and growth, by overcoming barriers to IS/I-US/C. The ECoP is set up to be self-sustaining. 10 existing Hubs have committed to join as ECoP Founding Members. The ECoP will preserve the findings of IS/I-US/C research and innovation projects, especially those funded by the EC and member states. It will organize a continuous exchange of ideas and best practices and facilitate in-depth exchanges between experts to identify bottlenecks, evaluate the outcomes of related projects, and propose innovative approaches to overcome bottlenecks. Possible topics include the financing and operation of IS infrastructures, matching demand and supply in IS and I-US, sharing benefits, cross-border exchange of materials, water, and waste-water systems, regulatory issues in the use of secondary raw materials, the tension between re-use and use of waste as feedstock, to name a few. Digitalization is a transversal enabling aspect of IS/I-US/C and the usage of digital tools will be an important aspect of each expert group. In line with the call and to achieve its vision, the CSA will work along four axes: 1) Sustainable Community building and establishment of an IT knowledge platform as a tool, 2) Consolidation and creation of available knowledge by analysis of the state of the art, in-depth discussions of leading experts, and field trials of business models and financial strategies a.o. for large-scale demonstrators, 3) Development of a KPI toolkit for the assessment of the maturity of IS/I-US/C regional initiatives towards H4C and independent evaluation of H4Cs as candidates for lighthouse projects, as well as the elaboration of policy recommendations, 4) Promotion of the H4C concept, societal engagement, and policy recommendations.
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-CSA - HORIZON Coordination and Support ActionsCoordinator
00189 Roma
Italy