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Integrating deCarbonization and cIRcularity actions in industrial sites to achieve Climate-neUtral and sustaInable ciTies

Project description

Advancing circular transitions in industrial and urban ecosystems

Industrial sites and surrounding urban regions are essential to Europe’s economy, but they also face increasing pressure to address environmental, social, and resource-related challenges. Historically, industrial production prioritised revenue at the cost of high emissions, excessive resource consumption, and inefficient waste management. The EU-funded CIRCUIT project is supporting the transition toward sustainable, circular, and climate-neutral industrial-urban ecosystems through governance mechanisms, participatory methodologies, digital tools, and evaluation frameworks. By leveraging interoperable dataspaces, participatory digital twins, real-time monitoring, and simulation models, the project will enable evidence-based planning, stakeholder engagement, and capacity building.

Objective

Industrial sites and their surrounding regions are key drivers of Europe’s economic growth and competitiveness, providing jobs, resources, technological innovation. Industrial production and its linkages with energy, mobility, and supply chains have historically prioritized operational efficiency and short-term cost reduction often at the expense of long-term environmental and social sustainability, leading to substantial negative externalities, including high consumption of raw materials, excessive greenhouse gas emissions, high energy demand, inefficient waste and by-product management, fragmented infrastructures. These impacts extend beyond the industrial site boundaries, putting significant stress on adjacent cities and regions through air and water pollution, resource depletion, and spatial inequalities. CIRCUIT will implement a set of innovative governance mechanisms, participatory methodologies, digital tools, evaluation frameworks and upscaling activities to enable industrial sites and urban regions to transition toward sustainable, circular and climate-neutral ecosystems. The interdependencies between urban and industrial coexistence, energy systems, land use, public procurement, mobility, and waste/resource flows’ demand pose also additional challenges for this transition. CIRCUIT will leverage advanced digital technologies, i.e. interoperable dataspaces, participatory digital twins, real-time monitoring systems, and simulation models to support planning, engage stakeholders, and facilitate evidence-based decision-making. These tools will be designed for replicability and scalability, ensuring that they are adaptable and tailored to diverse local contexts and governance structures. CIRCUIT will bridge behavioral and institutional gaps by designing capacity-building programmes, communication strategies, collaborative learning environments to support local actors in adopting circular and climate-conscious practices.

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Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MISS-2025-04

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Coordinator

ETHNIKO KENTRO EREVNAS KAI TECHNOLOGIKIS ANAPTYXIS
Net EU contribution
€ 915 000,00
Address
CHARILAOU THERMI ROAD 6 KM
570 01 THERMI THESSALONIKI
Greece
Region
Βόρεια Ελλάδα Κεντρική Μακεδονία Θεσσαλονίκη
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
€ 915 000,00

Participants (31)