Faced with the pressure to take responsibility for environmental destruction, the European Union (EU) has introduced a series of programmes, legislation, and recommendations aimed at decreasing environmental impact and expediting the transition to a more sustainable and circular Europe. A key element of this package is the EU´s recent policy, the European Green Deal. It presents a roadmap for turning the EU’s economy sustainable by transforming climate and environmental challenges into opportunities and setting out clear actions for a fair and inclusive change for all. A cornerstone of the European Green Deal is the shift from a linear to a circular economy (CE), embodying the EU’s new strategy for the long-term growth of the European space. As a key building block of the European Green Deal, the EU also approved the Circular Economy Action Plan. This future-oriented agenda comprises a set of measures necessary for achieving Europe´s transition towards CE, resulting in a cleaner and more competitive Europe.
Cities and regions play a pivotal role in the realisation of the set goals and actions with a high potential to speed up Europe´s circular transition. Local and regional authorities are responsible for key sectors and policy areas that are fundamental for enabling the circular shift, including waste management, mobility, energy, land use, among others. In addition, cities have an enormous ecological footprint as they consume over 70% of world resources and all energy produced, emit 70% of all greenhouse gases (European Investment Bank, 2018), and generate almost 70% of global garbage (The United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, 2016). As significant engines of economic growth, cities have the potential to push the CE agenda ahead, resulting in economic, environmental, and social advantages.
Within this framework, several cities and regions have begun to promote the research, testing, and implementation of circular projects as part of a commitment to accelerate the transition to an eco-friendly development model with lower consumption and more circularity. However, developers of new CE solutions often face several challenges and barriers that hinder their progress in making circularity a reality. Barriers range from supply chain and logistics issues to social awareness, policy, regulation, legal challenges, as well as market, investment/financial difficulties. Circular initiatives are highly risky due to the intricacy of these challenges and barriers, having a detrimental impact on the bankability of circular initiatives and their access to capital.
To further promote the transition to CE, the EU launched the Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI) as part of the Circular Economy Action Plan. Under CCRI, the EC also envisions the activation of project development assistance (PDA) services that can support the cities, regions, and other promoters of circular solutions in overcoming the diverse obstacles, allowing the CE projects to become investment-ready and successfully access the financial resources required for their implementation. CircularInvest is a CCRI-PDA initiative run by 4 organisations (INOVA+, META, Circle Economy, ICLEI EURO) that bring together the right mix of competences, experience, and experts to make available a set of unique and effective PDA services to CE project promoters from across Europe.
CircularInvest aims to bridge the gap between CE project development and implementation by helping circular project beneficiaries become investment-ready and access financial resources.
CircularInvest provides free project development assistance to the most promising European circular economy ideas, offering a variety of services based on their needs. CircularInvest´s services fall within the following service areas:
• Advancing circular solutions
• Business planning
• Fundraising
• Legal and regulation
More information on CircularInvest is available at www.circularinvest.eu
