SmartEnCity’s main Objective is to develop a highly adaptable and replicable systemic approach towards urban transformation into sustainable, smart and resource-efficient urban environments in Europe through the integrated planning and implementation of measures aimed at improving energy efficiency in main consuming sectors in cities, while increasing their supply of renewable energy, and demonstrate its benefits. The underlying concept of the proposal is the Smart Zero Carbon City concept, where city carbon footprint and energy demand are kept to a minimum through the use of demand control technologies that save energy and promote raised awareness; energy supply is entirely renewable and clean; and local energy resources are intelligently managed by aware citizens, as well as coordinated public and private stakeholders. This approach will be firstly defined in detail, laid out and implemented in the three Lighthouse demonstrators (Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain, Tartu in Estonia and Sonderborg in Denmark). The three cities will develop a number of coordinated actions aimed at: • Significant demand reduction of the existing residential building stock through cost-effective low energy retrofitting actions at district scale. • Increase in RES share of energy supply, through extensive leveraging of local potentials. • Enhance the use of clean energy in urban mobility, both for citizens and goods, by means of extensive deployment of green vehicles and infrastructure. An extensive use of ICTs is planned to achieve integration and consistency in demo planning and implementation, and to enable further benefits and secure involvement of citizens. These actions will be aligned to city-specific Integrated Urban Plans (IUPs), and the process will be replicated in two Follower cities: Lecce, (Italy), and Asenovgrad (Bulgaria) to ensure adaptability and maximize the project impact. Additionally, a Smart Cities Network will be setup to support project replication at European scale.

The European ageing and inefficient residential building stock needs to be refurbished to achieve the targets relevant to energy efficiency and to secure healthy and comfortable living conditions. RECO2ST addresses the challenges of nZEB refurbishment through a systemic 3 step approach: Initially a Refurbishment Assessment Tool (RAT) will be deployed to create refurbishment scenarios, empowering the decision making of the building owner, public or private. Second, Action Plans for the renovation will be formed through Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) and finally a refurbishment package of innovative and customizable technologies will be installed (Retrofit-Kit) for personalized renovation. The Retrofit-Kit features cost efficient and modular technologies: Vacuum insulation (VIP), Modular Photovoltaics, Smart Windows with heating and cooling capacity, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Intelligent Energy Management (IEMS), Nature Based Technologies (NBT) and optionally Cool Materials and Solutions. Their integration into personalized refurbishment packages for four demonstration sites will be conducted and validated. The renovation assessment tool and associated technologies will be demonstrated in four apartment block buildings (Spain, Switzerland, UK and Denmark) capturing climatic and construction variability across Europe, in total 67 apartments and 4900m2 of build space. The renovation assessment tool will tested on early adopter sites during the project. The modularity and adaptability of the RECO2ST Retrofit-Kit is key to achieving the expected performance and the Least-Cost method developed in the project will facilitate achieving this performance for the right price with a personalized renovation Action Plan developed quickly and accurately for each site under renovation. The demonstration sites will be refurbished into nZEBs achieving savings between 71 and 99%, with excellent internal environmental quality and payback in less than 15 years.

NewSOL proposal addresses the specific challenge towards high efficiency solar energy harvesting by advance materials solutions and architectures that are in line with those specified in SET-plan. Its main objective is to develop advance materials solutions based on innovative storage media and concepts for Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) up to validation in field of their performance by real time monitoring. This will be supported by an innovative thermal energy storage design based on the combination of new functional and advanced materials, like heat thermal fluid, sensible and latent energy storage media and insulating materials, into two innovative plant architectures: single tank thermocline storage and concrete type module. The main challenges of NewSOL are: Develop two new system Architectures: I) Thermocline Tank, (combining sensible and latent heat up to 550ºC), and II) Concrete module tank (sensible heat up to 550ºC). The scope to fulfil the challenges is to validate four new advance materials: 1) High thermal performance concrete (including carbon nanostructures), 2) Molten Salts (including nanoparticles), 3) PCMs, and 4) Filler Material re-usage. From the careful combination of the materials solutions within the two concept solutions six high relevant Impacts are expected: a) Reduced LCOE,10-12cEuro/kWh via higher material performance,b) New designs that enable a reduction of CAPEX and OPEX, c) Increase material understanding enabling long term performance,d)Deployment of high tech monitoring technologies included in the demo activities,e) Environmental re-usage of materials, and g) Through innovative materials, higher world market penetration of European materials supply sector. Moreover, investments foreseen at prototype level will be integrated into EMSP, part of the European Research Infrastructure Network, a research-enabling platform EU-Solaris, thus, NewSOL legacy will be a strength for the future of the European Renewable Energy Industry.

Based on a detailed mapping of urban challenges and relevant nature-based solutions (NBS), Nature4Cities aims at developing complementary and interactive modules to engage urban stakeholders in a collective-learning process about re-naturing cities, develop and circulate new business, financial and governance models for NBS projects, as well as provide tools for the impacts assessment, valorisation and follow-up of NBS projects. The different modules are: • a database of generic NBS and associated environmental, economic and social performances • an observatory of NBS projects best practices / case studies • a set of innovative business, financial and governance models for the deployment of NBS in a range of different contexts, together with a tool to help urban stakeholders identify eligible models regarding their NBS project contexts • a NBS project impact assessment toolbox providing capabilities for environmental, economic and social impacts evaluation at different stages in the project development cycle from opportunity/feasibility studies to design steps and project follow-up). This toolbox will built on a range of tools, from generic indicator-based assessment for early project stages, down to detailed modelisations of NBS behaviors. These modules that already have a proper purpose on their own, will furthermore be integrated in a NBS dissemination and assessment self-learning platform [N4C Platform] to assist NBS project developers along the entire life cycle of their projects from opportunity studies and project definition down to performance monitoring. Nature4Cities indicators, methodologies, tools and platform will be field tested in real working environments and on real nature-based solution projects and developments in selected cities in Europe, which will be partners of the project and engage their technical urban and environmental planning teams.