Deliverables

This Deliverable describes the project's stakeholder engagement strategy, which seeks to bridge the gap between research and real-world application through three co-creation cycles. The co-creation activities facilitate interdisciplinary exchanges between different stakeholders like researchers, policymakers, and industry experts, providing a platform for sharing results and refining research questions to ensure practical, policy-relevant outcomes.

To achieve the targets of the Paris Agreement, a broad range of socioeconomic sectors must drastically reduce emissions. Models are commonly used to project the development of such sectors and to the assess the mitigation potential and outcomes of national and international policies. Given the strong interdependencies between sectors and countries, relying on a single model for designing mitigation pathways would be insufficient. Instead, an integrated modeling framework is recommended, combining models from various disciplines to provide a comprehensive view of the interactions between environmental, economic, and social systems. The EU-China Bridge project focuses on developing and enhancing modeling frameworks to support net-zero emissions pathways in the EU and China. This report provides an overview of the key modelling frameworks being used in Europe and China to support policy makers and how they can be further improved upon to. The report highlights key elements of the model themselves and lays the groundwork for further development of them to improve their accuracy and utility.

This report is the initial strategy for the communication, dissemination, and exploitation (CDE) of EU-CHINA BRIDGE to relevant audiences. Among other goals, the project will advance the knowledge on technology innovations for decarbonising energy intensive industries in the EU and China and co-create innovative modelling by combining cutting-edge bottom-up and integrated assessment modelling to quantify net-zero sustainable pathways. The report starts by defining the objectives of the CDE strategy and Key Performance Indicators that will be used for the project’s promotion activities. The report then identifies the target audiences and stakeholder groups of the project including policymakers, scientists, private sector entities, NGOs and other organisations. Potential promotional channels and means to reach the target audiences are also presented, with highlights being the project’s website, the Co-creation Workshops, the Stakeholder Dialogues, and capacity development and training events to the new model and datasets created by the project. By the time that this report was published, the main communication channels and visual identity material has been already created, including the logo, the project template, the main promotional materials (e.g., posters and flyers), the newsletter template as well as the project website and the social media accounts. In the upcoming months, CDE activities will intensify, including frequent posts to the project’s social media accounts, promoting the website, sending newsletters, developing the first videos, infographics and media articles, and participating in multiple events.

This deliverable revolves around the development of the Open Data Management Plan (DMP) for EU-CHINA BRIDGE. It presents the data that will be used and created during the project, along with strategies to ensure that this data is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). The report also outlines issues related to resource allocation, data security, and ethical considerations. In addition to this report, the project will use the ARGOS service from OpenAIRE and EUDAT to create a machine-actionable data management plan (maDMP). This will be an online living document that is continuously updated with links and metadata for datasets generated by project activities. The DMP report will be further refined and updated twice throughout the project: Version 2 (D7.7) and Version 3 (D7.8).

The primary outcomes of this deliverable are the project website and the EU-CHINA BRIDGE social media accounts that are already online. This report provides the links to these channels along with a short description of their design.

The key results of Deliverable 3.1 are two technology inventories for promising low-emission technologies in the steel and petrochemical industries as part of the EU-China BRIDGE project. These inventories are intended to support the transition to climate-neutral industries in Europe and China. They contain detailed descriptive and quantitative data on selected breakthrough technologies, including TRL and development status. The technologies were selected based on criteria such as net-zero compatibility and high CO₂ reduction potential. The inventories are publicly available as Excel files on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15342220) and are used internally for technology roadmaps and techno-economic modelling. The technology data are also converted to an interactive interface on the I2AMParis platform.

The deliverable specifies management procedures and tools to ensure a smooth implementation of the EU-CHINA
BRIDGE work programme and high quality of results.

The deliverable outlines the measures taken to ensure the quality of scientific and outreach outputs of the EU-
CHINA BRIDGE project and presents a risk management plan that identifies potential risks, assesses their impact,
and details strategies for mitigation.

The EU–CHINA BRIDGE project develops comparative scenario analyses to inform decarbonisation strategies in the EU and China. Scenario development is carried out through a structured co-creation process involving iterative stakeholder engagement. This deliverable contributes to the development of the scenario protocol that will be then implemented by the modelling framework by documenting and analysing the outputs of the stakeholder workshop held on 10 April 2025, which marked the first stakeholder engagement event within the third co-creation cycle. The workshop aimed to identify stakeholder priorities, transition drivers, main uncertainties, and policy themes to be reflected in qualitative scenario narratives. These elements serve as the conceptual foundation for the narrative protocol and quantitative assumptions for model-based scenario analysis subsequently developed in WP6. The deliverable presents the methodological framework, structure, and objectives of the stakeholder workshop, provides a detailed review of the nine topics introduced for discussion, as well as an in-depth summary of stakeholder input and recommendations on the five priority themes selected through interactive voting. Finally, the report concludes with the presentation of coherent narrative dimensions and scenario design assumptions derived from the co-creation process and the methodological principles used to translate the insights from the stakeholders into structured scenario design elements.

This report is the first update of the communication, dissemination, and exploitation (CDE) plan of EU-CHINA BRIDGE to relevant audiences. The report starts by defining the objectives of the CDE strategy and Key Performance Indicators that will be used for the project’s promotion activities and by reporting progress towards these indicators during the first half of the project. The report then identifies the target audiences and stakeholder groups of the project and suggests potential promotional channels and communication materials to reach them. During the first 18 months of the project, we have developed the website, established the visual identity, promoted the project in social media, created blogposts, and published the initial project outputs as four scientific publications, while organising several workshops for stakeholder engagement and capacity development. Nevertheless, the bulk of CDE activities will come towards the second half of the project, where most of the key exploitable results of the project are expected to be released. The report concludes with next steps for improving communication and dissemination activities in the coming months.

Chemical recycling is an essential option to expand circularity in the plastics value and for the reduction of
related scope-3 emissions. This Deliverable assesses the technical upscaling potential of pyrolysis for chemical
recycling in the EU using existing models and knowledge on the technical capabilities of pyrolysis. It also
analyses key barriers and drivers for its upscaling through a qualitative multi-dimensional analysis. Policy
recommendations are derived based on this analysis and address the identified main gaps: public risk-sharing
mechanisms could address a need for sustained technological experimentation; a clear organizational
framework defining roles, standards and procedures across the (emerging) value chain is required to activate
investments in the waste management sector and tackle the inaccessibility of high-quality plastic waste
feedstock; the significant cost disparity relative to conventional virgin polymer production induces the need for
mandatory recycled content quotas, consideration of recycling contents in public procurement or broader,
systemic policy changes, like a fossil tax or extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes; and the current
lack of legal certainty must be overcome and a predictable and trustworthy policy environment be created.