Currently, buildings are responsible for 40 % of the energy demand and 36% of the CO2 emissions in Europe. Decarbonisation of existing buildings plays a key role in order to reach the overall climate protection targets. However, current renovation rates lie in the order of 1%. Heat pumps are a key technology in bringing renewable shares into heat supply of buildings; especially their combination with onsite renewable electricity production e.g. by PV allows to bring high renewable shares. Their current installation in existing multi-apartment buildings is however still marginal. The proposed technological solution is based on decentralized heat pumps, in such a way that it results an easy-to-install solution for installers, low-intrusive for the occupants and easily adaptable to a large number of different building situations. This is flanked by developing near-zero planning, implementation and operation processes, in order to facilitate the work during the planning phase, ensure a high-quality installation and effective operation, and reduce the efforts and costs within the whole retrofitting project. The challenge of cost-competitiveness is addressed by developing new financial and business models. Bringing new players (such as financial experts) and financing models to the renovation market is expected to bring the needed paradigm change and boost investments in the residential retrofitting sector. Dissemination of measured performance and system characteristics from HAPPENING will be one of the key results of the project. Through 3 demo sites (Spain, Italy and Austria), the project will demonstrate a highly versatile, scalable and replicable solution package for buildings energy system retrofitting allowing 70-75% of renewable energy fraction, 30-50% of PE and GHG savings, reduction of planning time by 50% and installation/operation time by 30% and payback time for ESCOs and investors of less than 8 years, compared to best available solution existing today.

4RinEU will define robust, cost-effective, tailorable deep renovation technology packages supported by usable methodologies, feeding into reliable business models. The project will minimize failures in design and implementation, manage different stages of the deep renovation process, from the preliminary audit up to the end-of-life, and provide information on energy, comfort, users’ impact, and investment performance. The 4RinEU deep renovation strategy is based on 3 pillars: (i) technology (driven by robustness) to decrease net primary energy use (60 to 70% compared to pre-renovation), allowing a reduction of life cycle costs over 30 years (15% compared to a typical renovation) (ii) methodology (driven by usability) to support the design and implementation of the technologies improving the information flow and knowledge sharing among stakeholders to sustain participative design, ensuring to halve the current renovation time (iii) business models (driven by reliability) to enhance the level of confidence of deep renovation investors, increasing the EU building stock transformation rate up to 3% by 2020. The 10 main results of 4RinEU will address the following objectives: Technology: to reduce demand (Prefab Multifunctional Façade, Comfort Ceiling Fan), to improve energy efficiency (Plug&Play Energy Hub, Objective-based RES Implementation), to improve building operations (Sensible Building Data Handler), and to reduce construction waste (Strategies for Components End-Of-Life). Methodology: to accurately understand renovation issues and potentials (Cost-Optimal Energy Audit), to ensure an effective and participated design (Investor and Building User-Oriented Design Tool and Method based on BIM), to reduce construction time and failures (Deep Renovation Implementation Management). Business model: to identify the level of risk of renovation process and to enable well-founded investments supported by tailor-made financial tools (Cost-effectiveness Rating System).

Heating consumption in the residential sector in Europe is around 2300 TWh/y, DHW consumptions reaches 500 TWh/y, while cooling consumption is less than 100 TWh/y. The construction sector offers unique opportunities to decarbonise the European economy. However, as the replacement rate of the existing stock is very small (1-1.5 % per year), acceleration is needed. On top of this, the reorganisation of the sector poses tremendous challenges due to its extreme fragmentation: more than 50% of the residential buildings are owned by private single owners. Moreover, whilst few major industrial players are active on the market, it is largely dominated (more than 95%) by SMEs both on the manufacturers’ and the professionals’ side. BuildHEAT addresses this challenging sector by: - elaborating systemic packages for the deep rehabilitation of residential buildings - developing innovative technologies facilitating the implementation of the renovation measures - developing financial tools enabling large public and private investments - involving the construction chain from the very beginning and all along the building life cycle. A set of reliable, energy efficient and affordable retrofit solutions will be mad available, which execution is facilitated by industrialised, modular and flexible HVAC, façade and ICT systems developed. Despite the affordability, innovative solutions are more expensive compared to off the shelf ones. Therefore financing models are needed to facilitate the massive entry to market of the new technologies. BuildHEAT aims to leverage large private investments by using European structural funds, thus promoting retrofit actions at quarter level. Finally, BuildHEAT involves the entire construction chain – from owners to professionals to investors – in the retrofit process and all along the lifetime of the building, by addressing technical, behavioural, cultural and economic perspectives. In this way, awareness and involvement are triggered.