In order to reach the EU's energy and climate targets, a qualified building workforce is needed. Professionals need to be aware of new upcoming challenges: (e.g. nZEB, renewables, new state of art) and be trained on it. The objective of this proposal is to set up a large-scale qualification and training schemes to increase the skills of HVAC professionals related to the new upcoming challenges. HVAC professionals play an important role in energy efficiency, especially in renovation where HVAC systems are often replaced or upgraded first. The proposed training schemes are based on CEN standards related to the EPBD and mandated by the European Commission. The standards were voted positively in January 2017. The new CEN standards offer innovative approaches and solutions including renewables, economical calculation (cost optimum) and measured energy . To bring them into application, training is urgently needed. Several national calculation methodologies for energy performance of buildings are based on current CEN standards and they have to be replaced by new standards. The proposal is focusing on increased skills of HVAC professionals with direct links to the EPBD and Ecodesign Directive (e.g. Lot1, Lot 2). CEN standards are also used for the common EU voluntary certification scheme requested in the EPBD. The training scheme will be complemented by a qualification scheme. It addresses strong market request, shown by the support of stakeholders of the whole building value chain. Qualification and training based on European standards is an advantage for mutual recognition of qualifications and certifications schemes among different EU Member States. Standardisation is also key to create level playing field conditions for products European wide. The consortium includes standard writers, HVAC professional association and professionals, public authority advisers, universities and is supported by actors of the whole building value chain.

The ALDREN objectives are to achieve higher renovation rates and better renovation quality by overcoming market barriers and preparing the ground for investment. The excellence of the ALDREN solutions offered are: 1) a harmonized Energy performance rating based on the European Voluntary Certification Scheme (EVCS) verified by measurements to increase comparability, confidence and market uptake by standardized solutions (CEN / ISO); 2) associating low energy renovation with high quality indoor environments to trigger renovation and to promote health and comfort; 3) aligning market recognition of high quality with enhanced building value by financial tools and capacity building. Establishing business case for deep renovation to motivate private investment. These solutions will be integrated in a consistent, common way in a building passport to ensure the results and effective financing also in case of step by step renovation. The ALDREN coordinate and support actions bring together in ALDREN Alliance the main stakeholders involved in building renovation to specify the needs of the non-residential building sector and to organize the pilot use of the ALDREN procedure. This innovative approach to management ensures continuous feedback from stakeholders. The ALDREN actions are sound and credible. They answer a market request for common reliable tools by using the EVCS policy instrument (EPBD Art. 11(9)) and by completing it to reach the needed holistic approach for deep renovation. The impact on energy savings during the project is estimated at 30 GWh and at 1000 GWh/a after the project. The implementation and dissemination of the ALDREN procedure will use existing channels of environmental scheme operators for the pilot phase, but also for further dissemination. The ALDREN overarching outcome will be the infrastructure to enable market transformation by deep renovation driven by the business case and able to directly support the EU policies (EED, EPBD).

The main goal of QUEST is to promote investments in Sustainability and Energy Efficiency by identifying and empirically risk-grading factors that influence performance. QUEST will develop a simple toolkit to evaluate these investments. It may be easily applied to all types of Sustainability and Energy Efficiency investments and covers project design-construction-operation risks. Financial institutions applying the QUEST toolkit will be able to reduce risk while significantly increasing investment. QUEST will identify and statistically classify Project Risk Factors (ex. energy consumption) as well as Quality Management service features (ex. energy measurement) to reduce the gap between predicted and real performance in operation by exploiting existing databases (e.g. De-risking Energy Efficiency Platform). QUEST will then create and promote a data-driven decision-making process, certifiable to ISO EN 17065 standards. This will help financial institutions improve risk premium calculations reliability. The core element will be a “Quality Management Impact” factor that represents the added value of quality management. QUEST facilitates risk-securitization of investments by: - Reducing loan costs by identifying the risk profile of investments and also reducing transaction costs - Reducing insurance costs via improved risk identification - Transparently securing funding scheme requirements for Energy Efficiency QUEST’s proposal aims at reaching 880 financial institutions and other stakeholders. Working on 12 pilot projects, QUEST seeks to trigger 1.5 GWh per year (4.000 GWhPE/per year 5 years after project ends) primary energy savings and generate 1 M€ (80M€ per year 5 years after project end) in additional finance for Energy Efficiency investments.

To reach the EU decarbonization objectives, it is urgent to trigger more investments targeting energy retrofit for buildings. Introduced at European level since 2002 within the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) represent a relevant instrument supposed to be strongly structuring for the assessment of buildings energy performance, decision support regarding energy retrofit projects, development and articulation of financing instruments (public and private), benchmark of building assets and market value recognition. However, the potential for this instrument remains largely under exploited because of several challenges: The improvement in terms of reliability – referring to results variance depending on the assessor, input data and calculation tools, the lack of understanding between predicted and actual energy performance, etc. – represents a crucial issue to unlock confidence, decision support, and articulation for financing. Besides, to engage end-users towards deep renovation, the certification is to structure tangible pathways to ambitious targets with respect to building overall quality and energy performance improvement. Furthermore, the design for the overall process and certification outputs must be even more owner and occupant-centric and allow European benchmark and public policies analysis. To tackle the above challenges, and leveraging on the business operations of consortium partners, EPC RECAST will set a well-structured process and a toolbox supporting the development, implementation and validation of a new generation of Energy Performance Assessment and Certification, with a deliberate focus on residential buildings, more specifically existing ones, for which retrofit is one of the most challenging and pressing issue.

The MPC-: GT project brought together a transdisciplinary team of SMEs, large industry and research institutes, experienced in research and application of design and control systems in the combined building and energy world. Based on prior research, supported by (joint) EU and national projects, and practical experience the bottlenecks where identified that prevent at this moment a real breakthrough of geothermal heat pumps (GEO-HP) combined with thermally activated building systems (TABS) - GEOTABS. Solutions, which need to be implemented in an integrated way, were identified and sufficient proof of concept was gathered to join forces in a RIA. The innovative concepts aim at increasing the share of low valued (low-grade) energy sources by means of using low exergy systems on the one hand and aim at upgrading low/moderate temperature resources on the other hand. The overall solution consists of an optimal integration of GEOTABS and secondary supply and emission systems. To allow for an optimal use of both the GEOTABS and the secondary system, a split will be made between a so-called “base load” that will be provided by the GEOTABS and the remaining energy needs that should be supplied by the secondary system. A generic rule, eliminating case-by-case simulation work, will be developed. The second part of the proposed solution aims at a white box approach for Model Predictive Control (MPC) to generate a controller model with precomputed model inputs such as disturbances and HVAC thermal power to avoid case by case development. Research is needed to assess the overall performance and robustness of such an approach towards uncertainties. As such, the MPC-: GT consortium believes to have identified an integrated solution that will provide a near optimal design strategy for the MPC GEOTABS concept using optimal control integrated design. The solution will support the industry, especially the SME members, to expand their activities and strengthen their competitiveness.