The housing sector is a major contributor to current global problems of resource depletion and climate change, representing one of the most important consuming sectors at EU level: 50% of all extracted materials, 40% of final energy consumption, 33% of water consumption and 33% of all produced waste. The lock-in to the linear business models of today is causing many environmental problems and is one of the major barriers in transition towards a circular economy. HOUSEFUL project proposes an innovative paradigm shift towards a circular economy for the housing sector by demonstrating the feasibility of an integrated systemic service composed of 11 circular solutions. HOUSEFUL will introduce solutions to become more resource efficient throughout the lifecycle of a building, taking into account an integrated circular approach where energy, materials, waste and water aspects are considered. This approach fosters new forms of co-creation, increasing the collaboration among stakeholders of the housing value chain to develop new circular solutions and services. HOUSEFUL concept will be large scale demonstrated at 4 demo-sites in Austria and Spain, adapting the concept to different scenarios, including in social housing buildings. HOUSEFUL solutions will be evaluated from an environmental (Life Cycle Assessment), economic (Life Cycle Cost) and social (Social Assessment) point of view. The results obtained will be used to define an integrated HOUSEFUL service which will be driven and promoted through a SaaS (Software as a Service). The SaaS will integrate a Circularity Tool to quantify the circularity level of buildings and will include different circular solutions to be offered as services, encouraging the housing value chain to redesign traditional business models towards circular ones. 10 EU Follower buildings will be engaged with the support of a Collaborative Community of Housing Experts to replicate HOUSEFUL results and maximise the impact of the project.

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).

Large quantities of waste heat are continuously rejected from industries. Most of this waste energy, however, is of low-quality and is not practical or economical to recover it with current technologies. The Indus3Es project will develop an innovative Absorption Heat Transformer (AHT) for this purpose, focused on low temperature waste heat recovery (below 130ºC). The Indus3Es System will effectively recover and revalorize about 50% of the low-temperature waste heat, increasing quality of the waste source to the required temperature and reusing it again in the industrial process. The main objective is to develop an economically viable solution for industry, appropriate for new but also for existing plants and adaptable to various industrial processes. The developed system will be demonstrated in real environment in Tupras, a petrochemical industry in Turkey, enabling to analyze besides integration aspects, operational and business issues of Indus3Es System. Indus3Es System will be defined and optimized for different specificities in different sectors and industrial processes, for which up-scaling of the demonstrated technology and replication studies will be performed. Market potential evaluation and business analysis will be performed by industrial partners in order to guarantee a successful exploitation of the system in a short future. Indus3Es system will have a relevant impact making possible an energy efficiency increase and primary energy consumption of most energetic intensive industries in Europe. The embodied energy, the environmental footprint of the products and the manufacturing costs of energy intensive industries will be reduced, increasing the competitiveness of European products. Moreover, it will allow a sustainable economic activity for local “auxiliary” companies, usually SMEs, in high added value services related to the energy efficiency measures for industry.