Horizon 2020 project ARIES aims to improve the performance, availability and sustainability of particle accelerators, transferring its benefits and applications to science and society. In 2018, ARIES launched the Proof-of-Concept innovation fund for industry-oriented activities, awarding funding to four promising projects. One of these projects, coordinated by the RIGA Technical University, proposes to reduce the content of sulphur and nitrogen oxides and of particulate matter in the exhausts of maritime diesel engines using an electron beam accelerator. In 2019, the first measurements confirmed the expected reduction in pollutants. A dedicated project, with the goal of installing and testing a specially designed accelerator on a real cargo ship, requested funding to start in 2020. On the R&D aspect, ARIES also succeeded in producing a high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape that reached a record current density on a series of samples, thus opening the possibility of scaling-up for industrial production for the future collider machines.