A solution can perform well in its pilot and still be unable to move. A federated energy community depends on local assets, data, rules, actors and markets. A process for valorising hard-to-recycle plastic or textile waste depends on feedstock, industrial infrastructure, product requirements, economics and partnerships. In both cases, replication asks a practical question: what creates the value, what can travel, and what must change before the solution can work somewhere else?
That question connected the FEDECOM project and the PLASTICE project during a PLASTICE webinar and replication workshop on 30 September 2026. The event was organised around PLASTICE and included FEDECOM as a guest contributor; the programme also featured the separate SOLSTICE project. This article takes the comparison further. It uses the workshop as a starting point for a broader lesson: replication is not a final dissemination activity, but a structured process for making a demonstrated solution viable in a new context.
Two starting points for the same problem
FEDECOM starts from the prospective adopter. Its Follower Communities and national replication assessments were intended to open a dialogue about local conditions, while the Replication Playbook and online self-assessment tool turn that dialogue into practical decision support. The workshop presentation summarised the logic as Engage, Assess, Guide and Implement. The Playbook then distinguishes Minimal, Intermediate and Full pathways, allowing organisations to consider forecasting and optimisation, federation and interoperability, or more advanced trading and market participation according to their readiness and role. It also treats technical, operational, business, regulatory and organisational conditions as part of replication. The approach does not assume that every Follower Community has completed all stages or implemented FEDECOM components.
PLASTICE starts from the process and the conditions that could support it. Its replication methodology moves through process characterisation, techno-economic assessment, SWOT analysis, market screening, replication-feasibility assessment and an action roadmap. This sequence connects the performance of a valorisation route to the waste stream it receives, the infrastructure around it, the market for its outputs and the partnerships needed to operate it. The workshop used India as a preliminary lens for the textile route, examining opportunities at the level of industrial clusters rather than treating the country as a single market. Early directions included upgrading sorting, linking recycling to testing and certification, building on existing clusters, targeting fractions that mechanical recycling handles poorly and anchoring technology transfer in local partnerships. These were assessment directions, not claims of completed industrial replication.
The methods are therefore not interchangeable. FEDECOM is concerned with how a multi-actor energy system can be adopted in different technical and regulatory environments. PLASTICE is concerned with whether a particular waste-valorisation process can be configured within a viable industrial and market ecosystem. Their value lies precisely in that difference.
Lessons learnt
Start replication planning early
Replication cannot be added at the end as a promise to disseminate results. FEDECOM’s experience shows why: a network of interested communities is useful, but interest alone does not create a route to adoption. The work becomes more meaningful when engagement, assessment, guidance, responsibilities and resources are connected in the work plan and budget. PLASTICE reaches the same conclusion from another direction by making replication studies part of the pathway from process development to wider industrial use. Projects should decide early what evidence a prospective adopter will need, who will produce it and what can realistically be achieved within the project period.
Engage prospective adopters before fixing the pathway
A replication pathway designed without the people who will operate, finance or approve it will miss decisive constraints. FEDECOM’s Follower Communities created a channel for discussing national rules and local readiness before a replication route was selected. PLASTICE’s cluster-level perspective serves a similar purpose: it brings feedstock owners, recyclers, technology providers, testing bodies and potential off-takers into the feasibility question. Engagement is not only for winning support. It is a way to discover what the solution must become.
Assess local readiness instead of assuming transferability
The same label can hide very different conditions. FEDECOM’s national assessments use a common framework and a stoplight screening logic to examine the progression from self-consumption to energy sharing, peer-to-peer exchange and inter-community coordination. The Playbook’s profile-based self-assessments add questions about assets, data, roles, markets and organisational capacity. PLASTICE applies the same discipline to industrial contexts: country-level screening is not enough, so the analysis moves towards clusters with specific material flows, infrastructure and actors. A target context should be screened for technical, regulatory, economic and organisational readiness before a project invests in a detailed replication plan.
Adapt the whole solution not only the technology
In energy communities, the transferable element may be a combination of forecasting, optimisation, interoperability, governance and market participation rather than a software component in isolation. The appropriate FEDECOM pathway depends on what a site or organisation can operate, what partners can provide and what local regulation permits. In advanced recycling, the equivalent adaptation may involve sorting before the process, quality control and certification after it, a different feedstock mix, new offtake arrangements or a different industrial partner. The common principle is simple: replication changes the configuration and the surrounding business model while preserving the core value the solution is meant to deliver.
Turn methodologies into practical tools
A methodology becomes useful when a prospective adopter can use it to make a decision. FEDECOM translates its approach into a public Playbook, profile-specific self-assessments and three pathways that help users match ambition to readiness. PLASTICE translates its approach into a sequence that links technical characterisation to techno-economic analysis, market screening, feasibility and an action roadmap. The formats differ, but the design requirement is shared: tools should expose gaps and choices, not simply describe an ideal future. They should be accessible to non-specialists while retaining enough structure to support discussions with technical, financial, regulatory and operational experts.
Connect assessment to a credible implementation pathway
The end of an assessment should be the beginning of a more informed action plan. For PLASTICE, the roadmap is intended to translate a promising context into concrete next steps for technology transfer, industrial partnerships, infrastructure, standards and market development. For FEDECOM, the Implement stage asks how a potential case can be activated, adapted locally and sustained through partnerships, exploitation and post-project scale-up. Neither project treats a study or a tool as proof that replication has happened. A credible pathway identifies the next decision, the responsible actors, the resources and financing required, the evidence gate that must be passed and the point at which feasibility will be reassessed.
From promising results to transferable solutions
FEDECOM and PLASTICE do not offer a single replication blueprint, and they should not. Energy communities and waste-valorisation technologies fail or succeed under different technical conditions. What they share is a practical architecture for moving beyond the demonstrator: engage the people and organisations around the solution, assess the conditions that shape feasibility, adapt the whole configuration and connect the result to implementation responsibilities.
For future European research and innovation projects, the implication is concrete. Replication needs owners, time, budget, evidence and a handover route while the project is still being designed. The measure of a successful demonstration is not only whether it works once, but whether it makes the next adoption more informed, more feasible and more accountable.
Written by Zia Lennard (R2M Solution); reviewed by Giacomo Destro (ICONS)
Photo credits: Jesse Bauer on Unsplash
Please note that this article was drafted with the support of generative AI tools and was reviewed, edited and verified by the authors, which takes full responsibility for its content
