Grants to promote investment to support the industrial transition towards circular economy

One of the main characteristics of the Asturian economy is its specialisation in process industry within an area with a third of its territory under a singular environmental protection.
This was the reason for selecting Sustainable Materials as a priority of RIS3 (14-20) and later to identify the challenge of “Use of waste flows in industry” in the framework of S3 (21-27).
As a result, over these years we have collected an interesting portfolio of R&D projects related to these topics/challenge.
In a complementary way, for the first time (2021), IDEPA has designed and launched a support programme to circular economy investments in the industrial sector.
The object is to subsidy industrial investments needed to incorporate material (solid, liquid or gas) waste (industrial or urban) from third parties to their processes, or to recovery industrial waste heat streams.
We point out the following novelties:
• Process industry focussed.
• Complements the Innovation value chain: The investment will go beyond the current state of the art. Previous R&D projects have higher scores.
• Mandates collaboration among the supply chain (as a way to promote symbiosis and to reinforce the valorisation pathway): only third parties waste or higher scores for heat delivery to energy communities.
• Impact oriented: waste reduced; use of secondary raw materials; and CO2 reduction.
The funding programme is under the Regulation (EU) No 651/2014, art 38 and47, but are not reproduced verbatim.