Collective projects

Climate change is likely to make it harder to address inter alia poverty, disease, food and water insecurity in Europe. Rising temperatures and changing precipitation will affect the availability of food, energy and water, leading to likely increased volatility in food prices, and heightened regional tensions, affecting international stability and security. An increased frequency and/or intensity of extreme weather events may adversely affect human, animal and plant health, disrupt the flow of natural resources and commodities, and threaten infrastructure globally.

Specific Challenge

To create a world-class pan-European High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure and to provide state-of-the-art services accessible by users independently of their location, by pooling, integrating and rationalising the HPC resources at EU level.

Scope

Proposals should address all the following activities:

Specific Challenge

The transition to a low-carbon energy system poses a unique set of policy, technological and scientific challenges, changes the fundamental nature of the interrelations between all actors in our societies (from energy incumbents to regulators and citizens), and requires the engagement of all stakeholders.

The fast growth of the energy production from renewable energy sources offers new and economically attractive opportunities for decarbonising local energy systems on the mainland (e.g. isolated villages, small cities, urban districts, rural areas with weak or non-existing grid connections). It is also a technological and financial challenge for the electricity network. Decarbonisation and energy savings should result from an optimal combination of these energy sources.

Energy prices on geographical island are typically 100% to 400% higher than on the mainland; therefore the large-scale deployment of local renewable energy sources brings economic benefits and, at the same time, contributes to decarbonise the energy system of the island, reduce greenhouse gases emissions and improve, or at least not deteriorate, air quality.

Scope

The proposed solutions will contribute to at least 4 of the following objectives:

According to the JRC Smart Grid Projects Outlook 2014[1], the majority of cooperation takes place between organisations from a limited number of Member States while 15 analysed countries (NO, CH, IE, PL, HU, SK, LT, RO, LV, HR, BG, LU, CY, EE, MT) account for less than 5 % of the R&I funds altogether.

Commercialization of advanced biofuels depends on up-scaling of the technologies. The specific challenge is to overcome the high cost and high risk of the installation of industrial plants for advanced biofuels. This challenge is in line with priorities identified in the context of the SET-Plan[1]for commercialization of advanced biofuels.

Specific Challenge

Research integrity is key to achieving excellence in research and innovation in Europe. It is widely acknowledged that research misconduct undermines the quality of research and may potentially lead to social and financial costs.

Specific Challenge