Proposals should select one or more case-studies of bio-based industrial systems, within the scope of the topic, in the EU and Associated Countries and:

• describe how to improve energy efficiency, developing and implementing, for example: energy efficient (thermal) separation technologies (e.g., membrane distillation); fast and energy efficient drying processes of biomass (e.g., for wood residues, algae residues, and other residual streams); optimized catalysts, enzymatic processes and reactors to save energy, etc.. analyse the rebound effect of energy saving measures and how to address them;
• analyse the nexus water-energy in the processes of the selected bio-based industrial systems and how the reduction of water consumption contributes to energy saving, e.g., in separation and purification processes, as well as how to address the water-energy integration within the factory by considering the whole processes and all the utilities;
• describe how to enable energy consumption flexibility through the optimisation of processes with faster response rate to be flexible to variable energy supply, (e.g., by slowing production when less energy available, and prices are high, or increasing the production and/or storing energy and energy carriers onsite when surplus of energy is available, and prices are low);
• analyse the implementation of renewable energy use in the selected bio-based industrial systems, including shifting from fossil-based to renewable resources and/or shifting to electrification;
• include a task in the project to demonstrate the solutions analysed under the previous four bullet points, to i) improve energy efficiency; ii) integrate water-energy nexus; iii) enable energy consumption flexibility; iv) use renewable energy. Such solutions should be demonstrated on one or more of the selected case-studies, and should be optimised, also through the applications of digital tools including based on artificial intelligence. Assess the contribution to climate neutrality of the selected solutions.