Strengthening collaboration across EIT Community for a climate-neutral Europe

Transitioning to the Circular Economy is one of the main objectives of European society right now. Moving to more circular economic models promises a much brighter future for the European economy. This will allow Europe to rise to the current and future challenges of global pressure on resources and increasing insecurity of supply. Pumping resources back into productive use, cutting waste and reducing dependence on uncertain supplies is a direct route to improving resilience and competitiveness. By helping to decouple economic growth from resource use and its impacts, it offers the prospect of sustainable growth that will last.

EIT Community will be one of the key stakeholders ensuring this important objective for European society. This will only be achieved with a coordinated and efficient collaboration among the different EIT KICs (Knowledge and Innovation Community) to ensure a greater impact from the Cross-KIC collaboration.

EIT RawMaterials, EIT Digital, EIT Climate KIC, EIT Food, EIT Manufacturing and EIT UrbanMobility have created a Cross-KIC action to strengthen the collaboration of internal and external activities related to the Circular Economy. The Cross-KIC circular action includes two specific calls described below.

Cross-KIC Call on Environmental Technology Verification (ETV)

Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) is a tool designed to help innovative environmental technologies access the market. It consists of the verification, on a voluntary basis, of the functional and environmental performance of technology by qualified third parties, through tests of controlled quality. The end product is an ETV Statement of Verification published on the ETV website and used in business-to-business relations. This enables technology owners to document the reliability of their claims and differentiate them from competitors, and it helps technology purchasers identify innovations that suit their needs.

ETV is implemented by accredited Verification Bodies in three technology areas:

• Water treatment and monitoring (e.g., monitoring water quality, treatment of drinking water and wastewater)
• Materials, waste and resources (e.g., separation and sorting of solid waste, recycling of materials, end-of-life products and chemicals, biomass-based products)
• Energy (e.g., renewable energy, energy generated from waste, energy efficiency)

The call is open to any partner and start-up of participating EIT Community (EIT RawMaterials, EIT Climate KIC, EIT Food, EIT Manufacturing and EIT UrbanMobility) with a technology included in any of the previously defined areas that has been supported in any ongoing or finished demonstration project.

A webinar defining main aspects of the call and ETV requirements will be organised on 29 April from 10:30 to 12:00. The webinar will include a presentation of the Cross-KIC Circular Economy project and call description, a detailed presentation of ETV main requirements and finally a presentation of the new ETV Secretariat; the webinar will also include a specific final session for questions. Further details and registration link will follow soon.

Cross-KIC Call on Circular SMEs

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the economy, steering our economy towards a more circular model. However, their small size means that they face unique challenges on the path to closing loops and improving resource efficiency.

Some of those unique challenges can be linked to lack of company environmental culture, financial support, adequate legislation, innovation legislation and support mechanisms, information and many others.

The six KICs involved in this Cross-KIC initiative are a diverse set of publicly and privately funded bodies uniquely positioned to tackle the above barriers for the circular economy adoption by SMEs. The overall aim of this call is to enable the joint competencies and capacities of the KICs to help solve a more systemic circularity in an orchestrated effort as well as possible specific approaches towards circularity in SMEs.

Partners of participating KICs are invited to submit an application for the work on the development of an in-depth analysis covering the following topics:

• Investigation of the current situation regarding Circular Economy and SMEs in Europe considering mainly those sectors covered by the participating KICs.
• Investigation of main barriers hampering Circular Economy implementation in SMEs and potential measures to overcome those barriers, including EIT Community activities.
• Investigation and analysis of current activities carried out by participating KICs to support Circular Economy implementation in SMEs and estimation of efficiency.
• Clear and detailed proposal for both how to improve current support activities and new possible actions considering individual EIT KICs but mainly joint actions from Cross-KIC projects.
• Clear analysis of how those support activities should be coordinated with other initiatives to avoid overlapping and increase efficiency.
• The project should create an advisory board composed of relevant experts and SMEs representatives providing advice to the project development.

All existing partners of participating EIT Community (EIT RawMaterials, EIT Climate KIC, EIT Digital, EIT Food, EIT Manufacturing and EIT UrbanMobility) are eligible to apply.