Partner description

Leitat is a private technical institute located in Terrassa (Spain) with more than 110 years of experience in R&D, technology transfer and industrial innovation processes. The centres’ expertise has diversified rapidly over the last decades bringing value to a wide range of industries and sectors through dedicated R&D and tech transfer services. Our mission is to bring intellectual, economic, and social value to our company, clients, collaborating entities and society by transforming technological and scientific challenges into new breakthroughs and innovations. Over 1500 customers have already benefited from our talent, creativity, and strong commitment. Leitat brings knowledge and innovation to its customers through applied research and technical testing in the fields of chemistry, energy, environment, materials, engineering and life sciences.

With over 300 highly skilled team members, LEITAT delivers flexible solutions to face any technological and industrial challenge. Having been involved in more than 175 projects in H2020, CIP, LIFE+, FP7, JTI as coordinator and partner, LEITAT is a renowned player in European projects. More than 83 projects are currently under execution under the H2020 programme. The four principal Departments of Applied Chemistry & Materials, Energy + Engineering, Circular Economy and Health & Biomedicine cover a broad field of sectors, technologies and applications and are supported by state-of-the-art laboratories and facilities. Within the Circular Economy Department, the Environmental Technologies Area includes different research lines, such as:

• Water treatment and reuse;
• Air treatment and control;
• Nature- based solutions;
• Waste valorisation;

Aligned with the European ambition to become the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050, LEITAT believes that the Horizon Europe represents the ideal program to tackle this challenging goal and a great opportunity to develop ground-breaking innovation shaped at the intersection between different technologies, industry sectors, and disciplines.

Partner involvement in the UPSURGE project

In UPSURGE, Leitat leads “WP2 – Overall NBS Assessment” and is responsible for the creation of comprehensive review of NBS across Europe considering their ecologic, economic, social, health and regenerative effects and impacts.

Leitat is also in charge of the selection of plant species that will be implemented in the NBS demonstrations. This work is carried out in laboratory under controlled conditions using different contaminants representative of urban pollution. The selection of the plants species will be based on their purification, climate regulation properties and their adaptation to the considered location. 

Coordination for the preparation of the assessment of the NBS functionality is also executed by Leitat, this task considers the evaluated KPIs, focusing on air quality and climate change mitigation but also other side benefits such as health improvement, community cohesion, etc.

Finally, Leitat is involved in clustering and standardisation activities in UPSURGE by contributing on the communication with other NBS projects and platforms to foster transferability of results (in both ways UPSURGE <-> project/platform).