Project cooperation under HORIZON-NATURE-2027-01-02

CIRCE is open to contributing to a consortium addressing HORIZON-NATURE-2027-01-02, on the biodiversity benefits and impacts of the clean and digital industries.

Industrial use cases. The topic requires covering a minimum of five different industrial activities. CIRCE is in a position to bring use cases across the different industries named, depending on the consortium needs: transport, including road freight operators in several countries; networks and grid infrastructure; clean energy generation; and data centres; covering the whole value chain — raw material extraction, manufacturing and construction, operation and use, and end of life, including waste streams and material recovery.

What CIRCE can contribute.

• Biodiversity corridors. Spatial analysis to identify where linear and large-footprint infrastructure fragments habitats, and where wildlife crossings and corridor measures can be located to restore connectivity.

• Impact quantification and scenario simulation. Quantification of environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions, and of socio-economic effects of pilots and alternatives, combined with scenario simulation to optimise the design of the proposed solutions before they are deployed.

• Climate modelling and extreme events. Modelling and anticipation of climate change and of extreme weather events affecting both the industrial assets and the surrounding ecosystems, so that biodiversity measures are designed against future conditions rather than past ones.

• Raw material availability. Work on entry points that increase the availability of raw materials and therefore reduce the pressure of primary extraction. We would propose testing bioleaching and phytodepuration technologies, with subsequent recovery of strategic materials and compounds from by-products and residual streams.

• Resources, biomass and soil. Analysis of resource use, biomass availability and soil condition along the value chains under study.

• Biodiversity as a climate adaptation tool. Assessment of how biodiversity and nature-based measures can serve the adaptation of industrial systems and their territories, rather than being treated only as a constraint on them.

• Decision-support tools. Indicator-based tools that allow companies, operators and public authorities to compare alternatives and select the best strategy, making biodiversity one of the criteria that actually enters the decision.

• Risk identification. Systematic identification of environmental, operational and regulatory risks associated with each activity and each proposed measure.

• DNSH monitoring. Monitoring of compliance with the Do No Significant Harm framework across the activities assessed.

• Certification of ecosystem and biodiversity benefits. Methodologies to measure and certify ecosystem benefits, and a roadmap towards the accreditation or certification of the biodiversity benefits achieved, so that those benefits become recognisable, comparable and usable by industry and regulators