IncorporatEE project aims to realise EUR 60 million of total investments (EUR 32 million in energy-related measures) in major renovations, improvement of building services and installation of renewable energy sources in public buildings in the city of Salzburg and Villach. These savings will not only be calculated at the design stage, but will be guaranteed by an innovative quality management process up to commissioning. In this way, energy savings of 55% and CO2 savings of 65% can be achieved in building operation during comprehensive renovations, which means an increase of around 30 percentage points compared to previous renovations. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to turn not just one but many set screws. The new Performance-Based-Renovation-Package (PeBaRePa) is the sum total of these set screws for renovations. This package is designed to ensure the implementation of performance-based objectives all the way through to operation. This package comprises the following components: - Establishment and training of a dedicated organisational unit in the cities responsible for implementing energy performance quality assurance - Developing internal financing models within the city in order to be able to finance investments in energy-efficient renovations in the long term - Development of innovative, performance-related contracts for planners to provide financial incentives to plan and implement high energy performance - Development of a catalogue for sustainable refurbishment of public buildings specifically for the requirements and specifications of the participating cities - Development and adaptation of a quality assurance process from planning to commissioning of buildings - Development of business models for energy communities for photovoltaics during roof refurbishment The PeBaRePa will be disseminated nationally and internationally to public authorities as well as to planners and developers.

Vienna has set itself ambitious targets in its Smart City Framework Strategy. To achieve those targets, efforts must be increased considerably. With a large share of multi-storey buildings and the highest share of large buildings from before 1919, Vienna’s building stock differs significantly from those of the other Austrian provinces and calls for specifically targeted strategies and actions. RenoBooster – the Smart Renovation Hub Vienna proposes a tailored and timely answer to this challenge. It is the joint effort of renowned institutional, technical and social expertise led by the City of Vienna, to create an attractive offer - One-Stop-Shop - for the Viennese private home owners and their building managers built on existing services. The project is designed as comprehensive participatory process, involving the key stakeholders in Vienna and thus laying the ground for stable local partnerships for renovation. Substantial support has already been achieved in preparation of the proposal. The project combines new consulting services, banking and finance instruments, targeted subsidies, communication formats as well as technical and legal framework conditions into integrated services. Careful market segmentation and target-group specific communication will support the development and thorough testing of a number of new packages – including topics like efficient technologies, renewable energy and energy poverty. Quality assurance to support home owners in achieving the expected energy savings will be the essential element. In the first 5 years of the Smart Renovation Hub Vienna the new integrated services are expected to lead to an increase of the renovation rate and quality, triggering at least 110 mio € investments, 5.5 GWh/a of primary energy savings and a reduction of 1000t of CO2 emissions/a. Moreover, RenoBooster is expected to create a positive dynamic going beyond this project and stimulate further energy-efficient renovation initiatives.

The globalisation trends in the building sector resulted in the adoption of inadequate design solutions, especially for warm weather regions, which replicated designs that are far from sustainable or energy-efficient. The obsession with glazed-unshaded buildings is the most visible aspect of this trend. These buildings perform badly even in central Europe, and yet we see an ever-growing number of glass tower buildings in Africa. The need to fight this cycle of inadequate building practices is clear, especially considering a climate change scenario. In light of this challenge, it is urgent to investigate the best sustainable design and construction examples from warm regions worldwide. Design strategy involves bioclimatic approaches and other low-energy solutions for maintaining comfort levels in warmer climates. Some of these solutions already exist in Africa and only need to be disseminated and adapted to other regions. Inspiration might originate from nature, like the Saharan Silver ants, with enhanced optical reflection and radiative heat dissipation capabilities. This concept was recently successfully adapted as a building surface finishing layer. Combining these state-of-the-art approaches with the best bioclimatic solutions will be the hallmark of the ABC 21 project.

NOVICE will develop and demonstrate a new business model in building renovation to better monetize energy efficiency by consolidating services and subsequent revenue streams from both energy savings and demand response. In order to do so NOVICE introduces new actors (aggregators) in building energy upgrade projects and fosters their collaboration with ESCOs, financing institutions, facilities management companies, engineering consultants to facilitate the roll out of the dual (grid services and energy efficiency) energy services model. The main business bond to be forged between ESCOs and Aggregators through NOVICE will allow their seamless collaboration in exploiting economies of scope and scale along with risk sharing on implementing building energy renovations. That business relationship will take the form of a MoU and will result in the composition of a new enhanced EPC template that can deliver the successful deployment of the dual energy services scheme in building renovation. The enhanced EPC template and the overall dual energy services scheme will be scrutinized by a financing institution to assess its bankability and identify the appropriate financing mechanisms for initiating and rolling out investments under that scheme. NOVICE throughout its duration targets to trigger the initiation of more than 20.8 m EUR of investments in building renovation based on the dual energy services model that will result in primary energy savings of more than 25.2 GWh/year. To achieve that target NOVICE brings together a highly experienced consortium that consists of stakeholders from the entire value chain (research institutions, technology vendors, engineering consultants and facilitators, Aggregators, ESCOs, Financing institutions, Facilities Management companies) of building renovation. Strong participation of SMEs (6 out 9 partners) demonstrate the commercial exploitation potential of the NOVICE outputs and supports the successful rollout of the NOVICE business model.

DELTA proposes a DR management platform that distributes parts of the Aggregator’s intelligence into lower layers of a novel architecture, based on VPP principles, in order to establish a more easily manageable & computationally efficient DR solution, ultimately aiming to introduce scalability & adaptiveness into the Aggregator’s DR toolkits; the DELTA engine will be able to adopt & integrate multiple strategies & policies provided from its energy market stakeholders, making it authentically modular & future-proof. DELTA will also deliver a fully autonomous architectural design, enabling end-users to escape the hassle of responding to complex price/incentive-based signals, while facilitating active, aware & engaged prosumers, based on innovative award schemes, a social collaboration platform & enhanced DR visualisation. Provision of full-scale market & grid services will be made possible by delivering explicit & implicit-based DR elasticity services, while pushing current market regulatory limitations so that they can be surpassed, and satisfying potential grid constraints related to flexibility activation through Multi-Factor Forecasting and Deep Reinforcement Learning Profiling. Furthermore, DELTA will propose & implement novel multi-agent based, self-learning energy matchmaking algorithms to enable aggregation, segmentation & coordination of several diverse supply & demand clusters, designed end-to-end using well-known, open protocols (i.e. OpenADR), for increasing interoperability. DELTA will set the milestone for data security in future DR applications by not only implementing novel block-chain methods & authentication mechanisms, but also by making use of Smart Contracts which would further secure & facilitate Aggregators-to-Prosumers transactions. Two pilots in UK & Cyprus will realise the DELTA concept, covering a wide variety of residential/tertiary loads (>11GWh), RES generation (>14GWh) & energy storage systems (>9MWh) (average annual measurements).