Nowadays, the European construction market has to tackle the refurbishment of existing building stock. NZEB renovation methodologies are required as a key enabler through energy-efficient buildings. REZBUILD will address this challenge by opening the construction sector through the integration of innovative technologies such as leaves in a tree in order to pave the way towards an annual renovation rate of 2,5% instead of current rates lower than 1%. The aim is to develop one refurbishment ecosystem based on the integration of cost-effective technologies, business models and life cycle interaction for deep NZEB renovation to diverse residential renovation typologies and interconnecting both, building renovation stages and stakeholders. This innovation will establish a multi-collaborative framework within a refurbishment methodology managed by an Agile Project Management tool capable to interconnect in real-time the key steps of a tailored retrofitting plan among all stakeholders involved within the building renovation value chain. This ecosystem will ensure the fulfilment of three KPIs: 1)A deep renovation rate at least 60% of primary energy reduction as a result, the application of a decision tree strategy created from the combination of united principles of the novel sustainable architecture and NZEB design concepts; 2)A reduced installation time at least a 30% of time saving in comparison with a traditional refurbishment works,and; 3)A rapid payback period maximum 12 years of the best retrofitting technology package installed in the residential building. The environment will provide an ad-hoc amalgam of methodologies, cost-effective technologies and tools applicable within the main residential building typologies in EU, with the aim of achieving a large-scale penetration and deep impact within the rehabilitation of the current residential building stock after its optimization in 3 multi-scale demo buildings located in the most representative climates in EU.

Trondheim, Limerick, Alba Iulia, Pisek, Sestao, Smolyan and Voru and their industry and research partners are joining forces to co-create the future we want to live in. As aspiring Lighthouse and Follower Cities, respectively, they have detailed out their ambitions into the +CityxChange proposal, which describes a structured approach on how to develop and deploy Positive Energy Blocks and Districts and scale these out as part of the Clean Energy Transition. The approach combines: Prototyping the Future through Integrated Planning and Design; Enabling the Future through Creation of a Common Energy Market; and Accelerating the Future through CommunityxChange with all stakeholders of the city. New forms of integrated spatial, social, political, economic, regulatory, legal, and technological innovations will deliver citizen observatories, innovation playgrounds, regulatory sandboxes, and Bold City Visions to engage civil society, local authorities, industry, and RTOs to scale up from PEBs to PEBs to Positive Energy Cities, supported by a distributed and modular energy system architecture that goes beyond nZEB. On top of this, the consortium will create a new energy market design coupled to consumer-driven innovation, developed in close working cooperation with national regulators, DSOs/CSOs, property developers, and local energy communities. Flexibility will be put at the core of the distributed energy system by creating new micro-grid operation, prosumer-driven Community System Operators, and new markets for peak shaving/RES trading to reduce grid investment needs and curtailment. Their aim is to realize Europe-wide deployment of Positive Energy Districts by 2050 and prepare the way for fully Positive Energy Cities.

STARDUST serves as smart connector bringing together advanced European cities and citizens of Pamplona (ES), Tampere (FI) and Trento (IT) - with the associated follower cities of Derry (UK), Kozani (GR) and Litomerice (CZ). These six cities, collaborating with relevant industrial partners, including a variety of innovative local SME, and supported by academia and research centres will demonstrate three lighthouse cities, deploy intelligent integration measures, test and validate technical solutions and innovative business models, and deliver blueprints for replication throughout Europe and abroad. The objective of STARDUST project is to pave the way towards the transformation of the carbon supplied cities into Smart, high efficient, intelligent and citizen oriented cities, developing urban technical green solutions and innovative business models, integrating the domains of buildings, mobility and efficient energy through ICT, testing and validating these solutions, enabling their fast roll out in the market . The core idea of the STARDUST project is the demonstration of different “innovation islands” as urban incubators of technological, social, regulatory and market solutions which, once validated, could contribute to this objective of transformation of our cities towards Smart Cities. The integrated approach of STARDUST is based in the combination of technological solutions with human being reflected in joint decision making, economic constraints, citizen’s governance, etc. The STARDUST Smart City concept has been designed to enhance the integration of all these aspects to define a new Urban Metabolism.

The overall objective of TRUST-EPC-SOUTH is to scale up investments on Energy Efficiency (EE) and other Sustainable Energy (SE) in the tertiary sector of southern European countries, with particular focus on Energy Performance Contracts (EPC) projects. This objective will be achieved through the development of an ad hoc investment standardization and benchmarking framework and supported with the organisation of tailored capacity building activities that will allow project developers (including ESCOs , ESPCs and other EPC providers), project sponsors and tertiary sector actors to more easily access third party financing, thus unlocking the large tertiary sector EE/SE market potential. Geographically, the project will be carried out in the following 6 countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia and Greece, in which we both see a need to improve the situation and a large untapped market potential in the tertiary sector.