In recent years, research has shown that energy savings resulting from energy efficiency improvements have wider benefits for the economy and society such as increases in employment, GDP, energy security, positive impacts on health, ecosystems and crops or resource consumption. In order to develop more cost-effective energy efficiency policies and optimised long-term strategies in the EU, these multiple benefits have to be accounted for more comprehensively in the future. Although this field of research is growing, the findings are disperse and mostly have important gaps regarding geographic, sectorial or technical measure coverage and findings vary largely. This makes a consideration of multiple benefits in policy making and policy evaluation difficult today. The proposed project addresses these issues and aims at closing the identified gaps by five central research innovations: 1) data gathering on energy savings and technology costs per EU country for the most relevant 20 to 30 energy efficiency measures in the residential, commercial, industrial and transport sectors, 2) developing adequate methodologies for benefit quantification, monetisation and aggregation, 3) quantifying the most important multiple benefits and where adequate, monetising, 4) developing an openly available calculation tool that greatly simplifies the evaluation of co-impacts for specific energy efficiency measures to enable decision-making and 5) developing a simple online visualisation tool for customisable graphical analysis and assessment of multiple benefits and data exportation. Project outcomes can thus directly be used by stakeholders and will help to define cost-effective policies and support policy-makers and evaluators in the development and monitoring of energy efficiency strategies and policies in the future.

The 2018 EPBD update identifies deep renovation as key to drastically reduce energy demand and achieve the EU vision of a decarbonised building stock by 2050. The technology to achieve this reduction is available on the market today. Renovation rates are still far from the target 3% and shallow retrofits persist with low impacts on energy consumption. StepUP will develop a new process for deep renovation for decarbonisation, with fast design to operation feedback loops to minimise performance gap and optimise investments. The project will deliver plug&play technologies for minimal disruption, interconnected for maximum impact on energy, costs, IEQ and user comfort. The new iterative approach to renovation, based in big data for continuous performance improvement, will reduce financial barriers and make decarbonisation of existing buildings a reliable, attractive investment. StepUP will: 1. Make renovation more attractive and reliable with a new methodology based on near-real time data intelligence to identify cost-optimal, high impact interventions at any stage of the building life; 2. Reduce the performance gap to 10% via an integrated life-cycle software platform to plan renovation steps, identify high value ECM, improve IEQ, integrate RES (including storage) and optimise operations by constantly refining and verifying targets and constraints; 3. Minimise time on site to 40% by advancing innovative technologies for deep renovation to a market-ready renovation package of Plug & Play Technologies, including RE generation and storage for decarbonisation; 4. Optimise renovation investments via innovative financing models for optimisation of energy, comfort and cost performance over the building life, based on progressive financing and building performance as a service; 5. Accelerate the renovation market via an open protocol for interoperability of the StepUP solutions with third party market products, fostering a plug&play environment accessible to innovative SMEs.

NewTREND seeks to improve the energy efficiency of the existing European building stock and to improve the current renovation rate by developing a new participatory integrated design methodology targeted to the energy retrofit of buildings and neighbourhoods, establishing energy performance as a key component of refurbishments. The methodology will foster collaboration among stakeholders in the value chain, engaging occupants and building users and supporting all the refurbishment phases through the whole life cycle of the renovation. The methodology will be supported by an online platform to ease collaborative design, which will play the role of exchanging information and facilitating dialogue between the different stakeholders involved in the retrofit process. It will store all the information useful to the design of the retrofit intervention in a cloud based interoperable data exchange server, i.e. the District Information Model server, which has the ability to and export multiple file formats thanks to semantic web technologies. A Data Manager tool will be developed to guide the designers in the data collection phase, which might be a complex task for retrofit projects where information and drawings are scattered or even not available. The NewTREND platform will be a tool for collaborative design allowing evaluation of different design options at both building and district level through dynamic simulations via a Simulation & Design Hub. Design options, including district schemes and shared renewables will be presented to the design team, together with available financing schemes and applicable business models, in a library which will build on lessons from past and ongoing R&D projects. The NewTREND methodology and tools will be validated in three real refurbishment projects in Hungary, Finland and Spain where the involvement of all the stakeholders in the design .process, will be evaluated and specific activities will be dedicated to inhabitants and users

Syn.ikia aims at achieving sustainable plus energy neighbourhoods with more than 100% energy savings, 90% renewable energy generation triggered, 100% GHG emission reduction, and 10% life cycle costs reduction, compared to nZEB levels. This will be achieved while ensuring high quality indoor environment and well-being. Our main strategy for achieving these goals is to deliver a blueprint for sustainable plus energy buildings and neighbourhoods, leading the way to plus energy districts and cities, through: I. Demonstrating new designs and efficient operation of sustainable plus energy neighbourhoods through the balanced application of integrated energy design, energy- and cost-efficiency measures, local renewables, local storage, energy flexibility, and energy sharing and trading. This will be demonstrated in four real-life development projects with plus energy apartment blocks located in four climatic zones and representing four different types of urban development strategies. II. Delivering customized designs, innovative technologies, and decision support strategies and tools that enable informed decisions to be made by the key stakeholders in Europe. III. Encouraging community engagement and empower user’s control facilitated by digital platforms and driven by housing affordability, improved quality of life, and environmental consciousness to inform and enable behavioural change. IV. Unlocking the potential of neighbourhoods as flexibility providers that enable more RES to enter the system and allow for flexible management of energy demand and RES generation in neighbourhoods, to avoid costly reinforcements of distribution grids while improving the quality and reliability of supply. V. Providing big data based infrastructure management and smart networks that, together with new and validated construction technologies and materials, unlock the flexibility potential, enable community engagement, and provide well-managed housing for the citizens.