Powering access to investment for next generation circular economy initiatives in cities and regions

CircularInvest is a CCRI-PDA initiative proposed by 4 organisations (META, INOVA+, Circle Economy and ICLEI EURO) that aims provide project development assistance (PDA) to selected circular economy (CE) project promoters from across Europe so as to access the resources needed to develop significant CE investment projects at local and regional scale and to close the investments during the action.

In the proposal phase, CircularInvest collected signed support letters from European cities that wish to benefit from the CircularInvest PDA services with an overall investment volume exceeding 20M.

CircularInvest will be deployed in 4 stages: 1) Ignition: promotion and launch of 2 calls for expressions of interest to engage CE project promoters in CircularInvests PDA services; 2) Selection: implementing an independent and inclusive selection of CE investment project promoters (beneficiaries) to receive PDA support; 3) Technical assistance: delivering PDA services based on a three-pillar-approach: a) one-to-one tailored specialised services: support from experts to beneficiaries, b) many-to-one peer-to-peer workshops: support from beneficiaries to beneficiaries; b) many-to-many, knowledge transfer and networking actions: knowledge transfer and networking opportunities created for beneficiaries with investors, CE project promoters, and other stakeholders; 4) Replication: distilling lessons learnt and preparing the pathway for future replication through the exploitation key exploitable results: Step-by-Step Guide (K1) for de-risking of future CE investment projects; Policy recommendations (K2) for suitable policies for CE investments across Europe; Circular Investor guide (K3) for increasing investor trust; Community of Practice (K4), a knowledge exchange platform for CE investments promoters; Business cases (K5) to allow the replication of CE solutions and the process of accessing finance; Pipeline of CE investment opportunities (K6) for PDA support after the project.