Insights
Stay up to date with the latest ERINN Innovation updates, including news from our projects and valuable insights into our work and impact.
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- ERINN News
- Land Restoration
October 26, 2021
ERINN Innovation collaborates on Accelerate Green programme to boost Irish SMEs focused on sustainability
In an exciting milestone for LIFE IP Peatlands and People, the launch of Pillar 2’s accelerator programme took place on Monday 11th October 2021, attended by Minister for State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Robert Troy. Peatlands and People is a 7-year LIFE Integrated project with three pillars – an ecological pillar (Peatlands Excellence), an economic pillar (the Just Transition Accelerator) and an education pillar (the People’s Discovery Attraction). The restored and rehabilitated peatlands are expected to store more carbon, protect biodiversity, improve water quality and support other benefits, while the Accelerator and Discovery Attraction aim to support economic growth and create space for social action. ERINN Innovation is one of the five key project partners. The Accelerator will provide a range of supports to SMEs to encourage the development of ideas into new products, services and enterprises. It will aspire to evolve so as to provide an incubator infrastructure to help businesses to test and adopt ideas and technologies for a Just Transition – ensuring the transition to a climate-neutral economy happens in a fair way. The Just Transition Accelerator is led by project partners Bord na Móna and ERINN Innovation who, following a tender process, appointed Resolve Partners to run the first accelerator programme. The programme – Accelerate Green – is the first Irish accelerator dedicated to scaling companies leading the response to climate action and sustainability by developing products and services based on green innovation. It will be located at Bord na Móna’s existing office complex in Boora, Offaly. The accelerator programme is currently accepting applications from the following: Established Scaling Climate Tech Companies High-growth SMEs pivoting to the climate change economy Earlier Stage Innovation-Driven Enterprises Technology, Engineering Science Renewables/Carbon reduction, Waste/Circular, AgTech Applications close on 10th December with the programme due to begin on 1st February 2022. Potential applicants are encouraged to register their interest and book office hours to discuss the programme. For more information, please visit: accelerategreen.ie. For more information on LIFE IP Peatlands and People, please visit: www.peatlandsandpeople.ie Image from the Accelerate Green launch event (L-R): Rebecca Doyle of ERINN Innovation, LIFE IP Peatlands and People Project Manager; David Murphy CEO of ERINN Innovation; Robert Troy, Minister for State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment; Declan Clarke of ERINN Innovation, LIFE IP Peatlands and People Pillar 2 Just Transition Accelerator Lead; John MacNamara of Bord na Móna, LIFE IP Peatlands and People Project Coordinator; Dr Christine Domegan of the Whitaker Institute NUI Galway, LIFE IP Peatlands and People Pillar 3 People’s Discovery Attraction Lead; Tom Donnellan, Bord na Móna CEO; and Suzanne Nally of the NPWS, LIFE IP Peatlands and People project partner rehabilitating peatlands under Pillar 1 Peatlands Excellence.
- Project News
- Marine
October 7, 2021
New EU project launched to harness the power of marine microbes and their bioactive molecules
Researchers and commercial partners from 10 European countries are uniting to develop new, sustainable methods to protect fish, algae and sponges from diseases, by harnessing the power of disease-suppressive marine microbes and the bioactive substances they produce. Bioactive substances have actions in the body that may promote good health. Researchers expect to find applications in the pharmaceutical, agriculture and aquaculture industries. Funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme, MARBLES is a €7.5 million, 5-year project that will develop new methods for the sustainable collection and use of biological resources from marine environments and assess their commercial potential. MARBLES aims to create eco-friendly solutions as viable alternatives to the synthetic chemicals currently used in pharmaceutical, agriculture and aquaculture settings. In particular, the project will assess the potential of microorganisms derived from marine sponges, microalgae and fish for disease suppression, both the microorganisms themselves and their bioactive natural products will be assessed. These disease-suppressive microorganisms will be obtained from “microbiomes”, which are the complex collection of microorganisms that live in and around their marine hosts. Among other benefits, these microbes and the natural products derived from them will help to increase the efficacy of fish production, therefore reducing the pressure on harvesting wild fish, and will help the transition of the agricultural crop sector towards bio-based and circular solutions. The marine environment remains a largely untapped and poorly understood source of natural products with potential for application in the pharmaceutical and food industries. Challenges include finding and identifying the bacteria and their molecules, extracting their active ingredients in a sustainable, effective way, and the commercial and regulatory difficulties of bringing a discovery from the lab to market. In the context of an increasing global population and the current climate and biodiversity crises, there is an urgent need to sustainably harness new compounds with pharmaceutical and nutritional applications. These are the issues that MARBLES will address. MARBLES project coordinator, Professor Gilles van Wezel from the University of Leiden (the Netherlands) said: “MARBLES will have a significant impact across European pharmaceutical and food industries. The project will unlock some of mother nature’s secrets, and harness marine biodiversity’s potential to address some of society’s greatest challenges. Our diverse team will ensure the project’s outcomes will have practical applications in a range of settings. I’m looking forward to sharing our developments!” MARBLES partners will hold an inaugural project meeting from 7-8 October 2021 at Kasteel Oud Poelgeest (the Netherlands). The project will run until April 2026.
- Horizon Europe
- Project News
- Land Restoration
October 6, 2021
WaterLANDS: New European Green Deal project launched to lead largescale restoration of European wetlands
An ambitious project has been launched to tackle largescale restoration of Europe’s wetlands, with €23 million of funding from the EU Horizon 2020 Programme Green Deal. WaterLANDS (Water-based solutions for carbon storage, people and wilderness) will restore wetland sites across Europe which have been decimated by human activity and lay the foundations for scalable protection across much wider areas. WaterLANDS will undertake hands-on restoration of specific wetland sites, covering an initial 10,500 ha, and create best practice models that can be applied to wetland restoration at other sites. By engaging with local communities and stakeholders, the project will ensure that wetland restoration results not only in environmental gains, but also social and economic benefits for the communities involved. The five-year project is led by University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland and brings together 31 other organisations from research, industry, government and non-profit sectors in 14 European countries. Commenting on the project’s significance, WaterLANDS project coordinator Dr Craig Bullock, Research Fellow in Planning and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin, said: “Previous attempts at wetland restoration have often been too localised or too fragmented to make a significant difference to the re-establishment of wetland ecosystems and species. In WaterLANDS, we aim to co-create a more effective means of restoration which captures ecological, social, governance and financial aspects, to connect habitats and communities across Europe, ensuring both thrive for many generations to come.” Comprised of diverse ecosystems including peatlands, fens, riparian marshes and coastal estuaries, wetlands are home to 40% of the world’s species. They also store and capture carbon, remove environmental pollutants, and protect communities from flooding. Wetlands are particularly vulnerable to damage from human activities. Europe has already lost up to 90% of its original wetlands, resulting in massive biodiversity loss, water and food shortages, devastating floods and fires, coastal subsidence and erosion. The largescale, integrated approach developed in WaterLANDS will address these challenges to ensure the resilience and health of both wetland habitats and the communities who rely on them. Funding for WaterLANDS is part of the European Commission’s Green Deal ambition to make Europe the first climate neutral continent by 2050 with a sustainable economy that leaves no one behind. The project will officially launch in December 2021. Please follow @WaterLANDS_EU for the latest updates
- Project News
- Marine
August 6, 2021
Biogears Final Prototype Developed And Sea Trials Commence
In June 2021, the BIOGEARS project reached a key milestone; the final prototype biobased ropes ‘biogears’ were finalised. The biogears ropes seek to provide an alternative to the petrol-based (non-recyclable) commercial ropes ubiquitous on the market. The biogears were manufactured at project partner ITSASKORDA’s facility in the Basque Country, Spain. Three prototypes were developed, all comprising of biobased material. The next phase of the project is to trial the biogears in mussel and seaweed Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) in offshore and sheltered marine areas. These trials began in July 2021 at AZTI’s experimental longline facilities sited at SE Bay of Biscay and AZTI’s experimental raft sited in Mutriku. Trials will run until July 2022. With this prototype and resulting trials, the BIOGEARS project aims to reduce the current technological gaps and extend the potential use of sustainable materials in the sector. The results of the project support creating a biobased value chain under the EU Bioeconomy Strategy framework. To find out more about the process of developing and deploying the biogears, please visit: https://biogears.eu/biogears-final-prototype-developed-and-sea-trials-commence/ To read more about the prototype development please visit: biogears.eu, Twitter, LinkedIn or subscribe to news
- ERINN News
- Horizon Europe
- Coastal Communities
July 21, 2021
ERINN joins Horizon 2020-funded SCORE project to increase climate resilience in European coastal cities
The four year project, SCORE (Smart Control of the Climate Resilience in European Coastal Cities), outlines a comprehensive strategy, developed via a network of 10 coastal city ‘living labs’, to rapidly, equitably and sustainably enhance coastal city climate resilience though an Ecosystem-Based Approach (EBA) supported by sophisticated digital technologies. The intensification of extreme weather events, coastal erosion and sea-level rise are major challenges to be urgently addressed by European coastal cities. Deaths caused by extreme weather in Europe could rise from 3,000 a year between 1981 and 2010 to 152,000 between 2071 and 2100 if mitigation pathways are not enacted to increase the resilience of European cities and settlements, based on a study in The Lancet Planetary Health journal. To tackle this challenge, SCORE coordinated by Dr Salem Gharbia from the Institute of Technology Sligo (Ireland), will lead a consortium of international scientific institutions, cities, and SMEs in a new €10m Horizon 2020-funded research project to increase climate resilience in European coastal cities. The SCORE interdisciplinary team consists of 28 world-leading organisations from academia, local authorities, Research Performing Organisations, and SMEs encompassing a wide range of skills including environmental science and policy, climate modelling, citizen and social science, data management, coastal management and engineering, security and technological aspects of smart sensing research. ERINN is part of the communications and knowledge transfer team within SCORE. Senior Project Manager, Jane Maher leads ERINN’s involvement with the project. The project will involve citizen science in providing prototype coastal city early-warning systems and will enable smart, instant monitoring and control of climate resilience in European coastal cities through open, accessible spatial ‘digital twin’ tools. The project seeks to advance the control of climate resilience in cities in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Slovenia and Poland. After a recent “Kick-Off” meeting in July 2021 with academics from across Europe, Dr Gharbia said: “SCORE will provide Europe with expandable and transferable solutions to increase climate resilience against extreme events in coastal cities. Together with our partners, we will establish a network of coastal cities that will work together and learn from each other to tackle climate change. In SCORE we want to put every effort to mitigate the effects of climate change now and in the years ahead” SCORE will establish an integrated coastal zone management framework for strengthening the Ecosystem-Based solutions and smart coastal city policies, creating European leadership in coastal city climate change adaptation in line with The Paris Agreement. For more information on the project, please follow @SCORE_EUproject on Twitter or SCORE on LinkedIn. NOTES FOR EDITORS: ABOUT SCORE PROJECT Smart Control of the Climate Resilience in European Coastal Cities (acronym: SCORE) Call: H2020-LC-CLA-2018-2019-2020 Topic: LC-CLA-13-2020 SCORE is a €10m Horizon 2020-funded research project to increase climate resilience in European coastal cities lead by Dr Salem Gharbia of the School of Engineering & Design at IT Sligo. The overall aim of SCORE is to design, develop, monitor and validate robust adaptation measures in coastal and low-lying areas to protect them from increasing climate and sea level risks, including coastal flooding and erosion, to enhance their overall long-term resilience. SCORE outlines a co-creation strategy, developed via a network of 10 coastal city ‘living labs’ (CCLLs), to rapidly, equitably and sustainably enhance coastal city climate resilience through Ecosystem-Based Approach (EBAs) and sophisticated digital technologies. SCORE will establish an integrated coastal zone management framework for strengthening EBA and smart coastal city policies, creating European leadership in coastal city climate change adaptation in line with The Paris Agreement. SCORE will provide innovative platforms to empower stakeholders’ deployment of EBAs to increase climate resilience, business opportunities and financial sustainability of coastal cities. The SCORE interdisciplinary team consists of 28 world-leading organisations from academia, local authorities, RPOs, and SMEs encompassing a wide range of skills including environmental science and policy, climate modelling, citizen and social science, data management, coastal management and engineering, security and technological aspects of smart sensing research. SCORE is a four-year project starting in July 2021. List of cities involved in the SCORE Horizon 2020 project: Sligo and Dublin, Ireland; Barcelona, Spain; Lisbon and Oeiras, Portugal; Massa, Italy; Benidorm, Spain, Koper, Slovenia; Gdansk, Poland; and Basque Country, Spain.
- Project News
- Marine
May 20, 2021
No more haunting by ‘ghost nets’: bio-based and biodegradable nets could be the solution
Celebrating European Maritime Day (20 May 2021), researchers in Paphos, Cyprus organised a clean-up operation to collect ghost fishing nets and derelict fishing gear from the local seabed. Two partners from the EU-funded SEALIVE project, the NGO, AKTI Project and Research Centre and the environmental research and consultancy, ISOTECH Ltd organised the event in cooperation with local organisations, the Paphos Fishermen Association and the diving organisation, CYDIVE. “Ghost nets” are nets that have been either accidentally or deliberately lost, abandoned or discarded in the marine environment. While these nets, and other derelict or abandoned fishing gear, no longer serve any purpose for the fishing industry, the nets continue to entangle fish and other marine animals. This can have devastating effects on marine ecosystems. Fishing nets have been identified as an item of particular concern as part of the European Directive on Single-use Plastics that will come into effect in July 2021. The Directive includes actions to target the collection and recycling of old fishing nets. However, the collection of fishing nets that are lost accidentally at sea remains a challenge. SEALIVE is working to address these issues by developing bio-based fishing nets made from green alternative materials such as micro-algae. Production of the nets is more sustainable compared to those based on traditional fossil fuel plastics. The nets will also be compostable at an industrial scale. This is particularly important because recycling infrastructure for fishing nets is currently not available in most countries and the recycling of traditional fishing nets can be both labour-intensive and financially non-viable. SEALIVE’s goal is to enable a transition to biodegradable, compostable nets, coupled with supporting infrastructure for the collection of old nets. This will create a market for otherwise useless fishing nets, providing an additional incentive for the fishing industry to move to sustainable methods of disposal. In addition, if biodegradable nets are lost or discarded in the marine environment, they will degrade much faster than conventional nets, limiting their “ghost net” potential. ISOTECH will work with Cypriot fishermen to test SEALIVE’s biodegradable fishing nets in real-life conditions for 12 months. The results from this pilot test will help to evaluate the effectiveness and operability of the nets and contribute to the advancement of research and the development of more market competitive products. Commenting on the event, Ms. Anna Tselepou, representing AKTI, said “We are proud to work with our local and international partners to develop better, more sustainable ways of protecting our oceans. Fishing has always been important to Cyprus and we are working to enable and support our fishermen to move to more environmentally friendly practices that will protect our marine heritage for generations to come.”
- Project News
- Health
April 12, 2021
EU-funded ESCAPE project launched to address multimorbidity in elderly patients
International experts from Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, and Sweden are uniting to develop new treatment and care pathways for elderly patients with multiple chronic diseases. Funded by the EU Horizon 2020 program, ESCAPE is a €6.1 million, 4.5-year project that focuses on developing integrated, patient-centred treatment pathways for caring for multimorbid elderly patients. As we age, many people face the challenges of having two or more simultaneous chronic diseases or conditions, known as “multimorbidity”. Treating multimorbidity in elderly patients is particularly difficult, especially when it involves both mental and physical conditions. Caring for these multimorbid elderly patients requires different teams of experts from across the healthcare system. However, in many cases there are barriers within healthcare systems that prevent information exchange and limit sharing of data. This can lead to fragmented healthcare and potentially adverse outcomes for patients. ESCAPE will address this challenge by creating an integrated, patient-centred approach for treating multimorbid elderly patients. The project’s interdisciplinary, multinational team of 16 partner organisations from eight European countries includes experts from general and hospital medical practices, psychology, health economics, Digital Health systems and patient and informal carer representatives. Supported by a customised version of the cutting-edge imergo® Integrated Care Platform developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT), ESCAPE’s multidisciplinary team will create customised treatment plans that are personalised to individual patients’ needs and preferences and integrated among healthcare providers. The platform will empower patients and informal carers to prioritise the treatments that will improve their quality of life. ESCAPE project coordinator, Dr Susanne S. Pedersen, Professor of Cardiac Psychology and Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern Denmark and affiliated with the Department of Cardiology, Odense University Hospital said: “ESCAPE is an innovative project that has the potential to create a profound change in how we treat and manage multimorbid elderly patients. The integrated, patient centred approach we are developing will enable healthcare providers to offer more efficient, effective treatment that leads to a better quality of life for our patients. I am proud to lead this great team effort and I look forward to many exciting developments in the coming years.” A key part of the project will be a randomised, controlled trial across European countries led by ESCAPE project partner Professor Christoph Herrmann-Lingen, Universitätsmedizin Göttingen (Germany). Focusing on patients with chronic heart failure, psychological distress and at least two other physical co-morbidities, the trial will compare the outcomes of ESCAPE’s new, blended collaborative care approach with current patient care. Researchers will determine which approach leads to the best health-related quality of life for patients. The ESCAPE project commenced on 1st April 2021 with the launch meeting for partners held online on 8th April.
- Project News
- Marine
March 23, 2021
EU project develops biobased and biodegradable ropes prototypes for offshore aquaculture
The EU-funded BIOGEARS project has developed its first biobased and biodegradable rope prototypes for offshore aquaculture. The prototypes are a significant step towards the project’s contribution to a more eco-friendly aquaculture industry. BIOGEARS aims to provide the European aquaculture sector with innovative products and a value chain to challenge the existing gap of biobased ropes (biogears) for offshore aquaculture, which are currently manufactured with 100% non-biodegradable (petrol-based) plastics. The next step is to test the prototype in field trials for validation at sea. Test facilities have been identified in different sea environments, including offshore high energy conditions in a longline system; low energy conditions in a raft system; and an Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) system. Once started, the field demonstrations will test and monitor at least two production cycles with biobased ropes under best practices for eco-friendly aquaculture. These prototype biogears and pilot tests taking place in the BIOGEARS project aim to reduce the current technological gaps and extend the potential use of sustainable materials in the sector. The results of the project support creating a biobased value chain under the EU Bioeconomy Strategy framework. To read more about the prototype development please visit: biogears.eu, Twitter, LinkedIn or subscribe to news.
- Project News
- Renewable Energy
March 1, 2021
RES4BUILD project advances development of integrated renewable energy based solutions tailored to end user needs and requirements
The Renovation Wave aims to accelerate improvements in the energy performance of 35 million buildings across Europe by 2030. Much emphasis is on advancing technology integration by developing integrated and compatible technology packages for building renovations. However, accelerating the uptake of renewable energy technologies combined with Integrated Energy Systems (IES) also requires consideration of financial and social innovation to address non-technological barriers. The EU-funded RES4BUILD project incorporates this approach by developing integrated renewable energy-based solutions that are tailored to the needs and requirements of users and installers. The project aims to increase the uptake of renewable energy solutions for heating and cooling; decarbonising energy consumption in buildings and contributing to EU energy and climate goals. The project team is working to improve the performance and reduce the cost of the most innovative components of the RES4BUILD solutions: integrating photovoltaic thermal (PVT) collectors with magnetocaloric and multi-source heat pumps, optimising their performance through advanced control and building energy management systems (BEMS). Developed by MG Sustainable Engineering AB and the University of Gävle, the prototype PVT collectors with novel reflector geometry have been tested in two different climatic zones (Sweden and Greece). The prototype multi-source vapour injection heat pump, manufactured by Psyctotherm, is undergoing testing at the Danish Technological Institute. Meanwhile, the prototype magnetocaloric heat pump, developed and being tested by the Technical University of Denmark, has achieved record Carnot efficiencies of over 25%. Advanced algorithms for optimisation and control have been developed to be used as part of the RES4BUILD BEMS. The fully integrated system will begin testing in early 2022. Two related publications are available to date: “Impact of hysteresis on caloric cooling performance” and “Numerical & Experimental Study of an Asymmetric CPC-PVT Solar Collector”. In parallel to the technical work, JIN Climate and Sustainability (JIN) and the Baltic Energy Conservation Agency are collaborating with end-users and other stakeholders on case studies in the Netherlands and in Poland. This work aims to devise a best practice approach for more integrated and systematic renovations of energy systems, ultimately contributing to more efficient operation and optimised interaction with the grid, and thus a lower energy bill for European consumers. A recent report provides recommendations on what a robust IES should include based on these case studies. Work package leader, Eise Spijker from JIN commented that “To make the EU Renovation Wave a reality, IES for the built environment need to provide turn-key integrated technology solutions, offer innovative financial products, and apply robust end-user engagement practices.” RES4BUILD project coordinator, Michael Papapetrou added “It is encouraging to see that we have promising results from the lab and the prototype systems, but we are equally excited for the insights we gain from the stakeholder engagement process. Understanding the needs and expectations of the end-users and the installers is an important element driving our work”. The developed solutions will be validated in different regions, and together with a full life-cycle analysis and market review will pave the route to the market and ensure wide adoption. For more information on the project and more regular updates, please visit the project website at res4build.eu or follow the project on Twitter @RES4BUILD. The abovementioned publications and report are available at res4build.eu/results.
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ERINN Innovation is a value-driven company owned by the staff who support research and innovation to have impact.
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ERINN Innovation Ltd
Company Number: 600883 (Ireland)
Directors
David Murphy (IE/UK)
Laura Richardson (IE)
Marieke Reuver (NL)
Michael Papapetrou (GR/IE)
Reid Hole (NO)
