The Regional Action Plan is a document produced by each region providing details on how the lessons learned from the cooperation in RETRACE project will be implemented to improve policy instruments addressed to their region.
The RETRACE Action Plan of Piedmont Region includes five actions which address a wide range of Policy Gaps, aiming at promoting the transition towards a Circular Economy in different areas from governance to education. It involves a wide range of local stakeholders from students to enterprises, and combine impacts on current and future programming period.
The Piedmont Region is now committed to implementing the Action Plan and the five actions were finalised or are currently being completed:
ACTION 1 | Call 2018 for Research Projects Reserved for Companies Already Associated or Not-Yet Associated with Innovation Clusters
Goal: The call aimed to orientate and bring out more clearly the planning concerning the processes of resource efficiency and Circular Economy.
Status: The call (named PRISM-E) was launched on 18 December 2018 and closed on 8 April 2019. The projects are currently being evaluated and the results will be made public shortly.
ACTION 2 | Bioeconomy Platform
Goal: the call for projects aimed at establishing a new platform dedicated to “Bioeconomy”; it covered the S3 areas of innovation related to agri-food and green chemistry/cleantech, encouraging projects that intend to create connections between these areas.
Status: The call closed on 22 October 2018; 6 out of 9 projects selected for funding are related to Circular Economy, involving globally 87 companies and 25 Research Organizations. Topics covered by selected projects are related to the production of biofuels, fertilisers, chemicals and biomaterials from organic wastes; extraction of functional ingredients; improvement of the milk value chain by enhancing agro-industrial by-products; improvement of plastic recycling and reuse.
ACTION 3 | Training activities at Politecnico di Torino
Goal: This action focused on increasing and supporting the involvement, knowledge and awareness of the operators (potential producers and users) involved in the Circular Economy.
Status: The Open Systems course of the Master’s Degree “Aurelio Peccei” in Systemic Design was held on March-July 2018 and was attended by 70 students. It focused on performing a Holistic Diagnosis of the Piedmont production chains through the Systemic Design approach, starting from the RETRACE’S results. In addition to the course, the Workshop “Smart Demolition Challenge” analysed in-depth the topic of the Circular Economy regarding the construction and demolition waste; it was held on 6-9 March 2018 and it involved 16 students.
ACTION 4 | Review of Regional Strategies in View of the New Programming
Goal: The objective is to direct the revision of the Intelligent Specialisation Strategy of Piedmont and more generally the regional strategies and instruments for innovation and competitiveness, to explicitly include the promotion of the circularity of economic-productive processes and the reuse of resources.
Status: The activities are on-going; the Region has started monitoring and revisioning the S3, by dialoguing with the European Commission (Pilot Action on Industrial Transition) and with regional stakeholders.
ACTION 5 | Definition of Improved Evaluation Systems for Regional Calls.
Goal: This action aims at strengthening regional calls as levers to promote the circularity of economic cycles, by better targeting selection and evaluation systems.
Status: The action is not yet started, it will run in parallel with Action 4 to deal with the new programming period.
