Project description
Supporting transitions towards a sustainable circular economy
The EU launched the Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI) to further support the shift to circular economy (CE). Its purpose is to assist local and regional stakeholders in the implementation of circular solutions. Under CCRI, the EC also envisions the activation of project development assistance (PDA) services that can assist cities and regions in getting past a variety of roadblocks, enabling the CE projects to become investment-ready and successfully access the financial resources needed for their implementation. The EU-funded CircularInvest project is a CCRI-PDA initiative put forth by four organisations, and it aims to provide CE investment projects at the local and regional levels with a set of distinctive and efficient PDA services that will enable the closure of investments.
Objective
CircularInvest is a CCRI-PDA initiative proposed by 4 organisations (META, INOVA+, Circle Economy and ICLEI EURO) that aims provide project development assistance (PDA) to selected circular economy (CE) project promoters from across Europe so as to access the resources needed to develop significant CE investment projects at local and regional scale and to close the investments during the action. In the proposal phase, CircularInvest collected signed support letters from European cities that wish to benefit from the CircularInvest PDA services with an overall investment volume exceeding €20M. CircularInvest will be deployed in 4 stages:
1) Ignition: promotion and launch of 2 calls for expressions of interest to engage CE project promoters in CircularInvest´s PDA services;
2) Selection: implementing an independent and inclusive selection of CE investment project promoters (beneficiaries) to receive PDA support;
3) Technical assistance: delivering PDA services based on a three-pillar-approach: a) one-to-one tailored specialised services: support from experts to beneficiaries, b) many-to-one peer-to-peer workshops: support from beneficiaries to beneficiaries; b) many-to-many, knowledge transfer and networking actions: knowledge transfer and networking opportunities created for beneficiaries with investors, CE project promoters, and other stakeholders;
4) Replication: distilling lessons learnt and preparing the pathway for future replication through the exploitation key exploitable results: Step-by-Step Guide (K1) for de-risking of future CE investment projects; Policy recommendations (K2) for suitable policies for CE investments across Europe; Circular Investor guide (K3) for increasing investor trust; Community of Practice (K4), a knowledge exchange platform for CE investments promoters; Business cases (K5) to allow the replication of CE solutions and the process of accessing finance; Pipeline of CE investment opportunities (K6) for PDA support after the project.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-CSA - HORIZON Coordination and Support ActionsCoordinator
4450-309 Matosinhos
Portugal
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.