INDUCE

The kick-off meeting took place on the 20^th of February 2018 in Zaragoza, Spain at the headquarters of CIRCE. The day was used to present the partner organizations and main responsibilities in the project. Based on this, a detailed presentation slot about the work packages and upcoming tasks was overtaken by the responsible work package lead. The objective of a common understanding of the project and of the roles of all partners has been achieved. Members of all consortium partners were present and had the opportunity to discuss the presented input regarding the expectations of the project. Initial decisions concerning the next steps for the project planning and administrative issues were made and a roadmap for the early project phase was laid out in the form of deliverable outlines and a detailed project plan per work package.

Energy efficiency in the European industry and the behavioural aspect

Although energy efficiency is one of the highlighted objectives in the European strategy for a smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, investments for its improvement are often not implemented even in absence of technological and financial barriers. The Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) provides an opportunity for companies in this respect. It is important to note that this implementation does not just encompass capital investment in energy efficient technology, but also automation/optimization and good housekeeping. In this regard, it is important to highlight that approximately 50% of the untapped energy efficiency potential is related to structural and behavioural change.

INDUCE will focus on developing behaviour interventions that first target the higher management and in a second step target other levels and relevant roles in the organization. On the demand side, industrial associations will be involved to reach as many companies as possible for whom the project results.

Planning the stakeholder involvement right from the start

The INDUCE toolkit includes training material, online lessons, guidelines and tools to improve the energy efficiency of organisations in the field of food and beverage industry which will be tested and validated in 15 pilot companies. These need to be identified at a very early stage of the project. FIAB will be responsible to identify and engage these companies, with the support of the consortium. The contacts of pilot companies need to be collected and information material needs to be sent out to convince them to participate as end user of the INDUCE methodology. As the project results aim at high numbers of stakeholders involved, including 300 companies and 60 trainers, this task will start right from the very first month of the project. SYNYO supports the project consortium with its dissemination and communication expertise through developing a first draft of the communication plan.

The INDUCE community and training concept

The developed INDUCE methodology will engage the community of people working in the field of food and beverage industry. As mentioned, the toolkit will be tested and validated in 15 pilot companies from the food and beverage sector in four countries that represent over 45% of the EU companies in this sector: Spain, France, the Netherlands and Germany. In a second replication step, INDUCE community of trainers will be established by certifying 60 INDUCE trainers. They will be in charge of implementing INDUCE methodology in another 300 companies, hence increasing INDUCE impact up to 106 GWh/year of energy savings. Moreover, INDUCE methodology will be made available through network organizations already involved in the consortium (FIAB, FNLI, FPI, SCDF) in order to reach a wide audience for the project results.

SYNYO’s role in INDUCE

INDUCE gathers a multidisciplinary team with a well-balanced distribution between research organizations, national associations and enterprises. In particular it is composed by three well-known RTDs (CIRCE, ECN, FhISI), four National Associations (FIAB, FNLI, FPI, SCDF) and three enterprises with innovation capacities (KWZ, ÖKOTEC, SYNYO) from five different countries (Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria). SYNYO, as one of the most successful research-oriented SMEs in Austria, is the leader of exploitation and dissemination activities. SYNYO has wide experience in performing this type of tasks in various domains as well as in different European projects. In addition, SYNYO will also lead the programming of INDUCE toolkit based on their high-skilled team in digital system and smart technologies.