TRANSItioning towards an Efficient, carbon-Neutral Circular European industry

Project Information

TRANSIENCE

Grant agreement ID: 101137606

DOI

10.3030/101137606

EC signature date 24 November 2023

Start date 1 January 2024

End date 31 December 2027

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 5 912 058,86

Coordinated by

EREVNITIKO PANEPISTIMIAKO INSTITOUTO SYSTIMATON EPIKOINONION KAI YPOLOGISTON
Greece

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TRANSIENCE (TRANSItioning towards an Efficient, carbon-Neutral Circular European industry)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The need to approach climate action, resource efficiency, and the circular economy as economy-wide, cross-cutting issues is stimulating new industrial policies in Europe and worldwide. However, gaps remain in the science and governance of industrial transition: limited focus on relevant and little progress in tackling emissions and circularity in EU industry, fragmented research communities on mitigation, industrial ecology, and circularity, and lack of in-depth, open-source climate-economy and sectoral modelling capacity featuring heterogeneity of actors across industrial value chains. In this context, TRANSIENCE has six objectives:

O1. Model enhancement and integration to improve our understanding of the role of industrial decarbonisation and circularity performance in the EU’s net-zero transition
O2. Investigation of interplays, co-benefits, and trade-offs between mitigation efforts and circular-economy interventions in European industry
O3. Provision of policy advice and promotion of best practice in industry
O4. Transparency, openness, & legitimacy
O5. Reinforcing the role of all stakeholders in a transdisciplinary scientific approach
O6. Effective exploitation of new model capabilities and development of respective capacity in EU policy and industry

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

(a) CONCEPTUALISATION OF CIRCULARITY AND DECARBONISATION
-2 reports on scoping and conceptualisation of circular economy vis-à-vis decarbonisation
-Model-actionable database of measures, including costs and potentials
-Detailed report on the potential contribution of circular economy to decarbonisation
-Report on competitiveness and decarbonisation prospects of key European industries in transition
-2 reports on empirical sociotechnical analysis in three industrial clusters

(b) STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT & CO-CREATION
-Multi-layered stakeholder engagement strategy
-Stakeholder engagement database (with 100+ stakeholders from EU industry, policy, research)
-3 regional workshops in the Basque Country, Rhineland, Silesia
-Series of interviews in Rotterdam
-EU policy & industry workshop in Brussels jointly with sister project
-Report on stakeholder needs for model application

(c) OPEN MODEL DEVELOPMENT
-Open model development strategy
-Machine-actionable data management plan
-Zenodo community
-Report on open science protocols & ontologies
-Report on module interfaces and data flows
-2 reports on the MIC3 ecosystem framework
-Socioeconomic module (OPEN_GEM)
-Product & Service database
-EU & global MFA modules (EU-MFA, REMIND-MFA)
-Industrial pilot modules (ITOM, FORECAST-Sites)
-Energy-system module (OPEN-PROM)
-Environmental LCA module (LCA-TRANSIENCE)

(d) DRIVING THE TRANSFORMATION OF EU INDUSTRY
Not relevant in RP1

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

O1:
-Development/enhancement of all MIC3 modules (OPEN_GEM, P&S Database, EU-MFA, ITOM, FORECAST-SITES, REMIND-MFA, OPEN-PROM, LCA-TRANSIENCE)
-Two papers on FORECAST-Sites
-Paper and conference presentation on MFA and technoeconomic modules
-Conference presentation on REMIND-MFA

O2:
Not relevant in RP1

O3:
Not relevant in RP1

O4:
-maDMP in ARGOS
-Open model development strategy and interfaces
-Draft & final framework for industry transition modelling
-Literature and policy review & open database of circularity measures across lifecycle stages, sectors, and areas of interventions
-Parametrisation of measures & multisectoral overview of potential contributions of circularity approaches and costs at the EU level
-Analysis of socioeconomic, trade and competitiveness, energy security, and material autonomy implications of decarbonisation and circularity performance
-Systems Innovation definition of industrial transition pathways & analyses of 3 clusters
-Zenodo community, open code in GitHub, & 1 IAM PARIS Datastory
-Conference presentation on environmental-economic impacts of industrial policy nationalism
-Conference presentation on sociotechnical perspectives of industrial transformation in the four project clusters

O5:
-Stakeholder engagement strategy
-Regional industry workshop in Basque Country (10 experts)
-Regional industry workshop in Rhineland (8 experts)
-Regional industry workshop in Silesia (18 experts)
-EU-wide policy-industry workshop in Brussels (49 stakeholders)
-Report on barriers to and enablers of industrial transformation and on research gaps & capacity needs
-Conference presentation on insights from regional industry stakeholders into modelling capacity needs


O6:
-Visual identity & website
-Effective CDE plan, alongside 6 newsletters/press releases, 8 media articles, heavy social media presence
-Participation in 4 external policy events
-Establishment of synergies with other research projects (joint participation in external EU industry-policy event, communication of capacity/scope/planning to EC and A.SPIRE co-organisation of stakeholder workshop with AMIGDALA; 4 joint papers, 2 joint conference presentations)
-6 open-access peer-reviewed papers
-5 presentations at key domain conferences (e.g. IAMC, ECEMP, ISIE)

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