The 2021 EPBD recast highlights buildings' central role in the energy transition towards an integrated and renewable energy-based EU energy system. Smarter buildings will support the digitalisation and decarbonisation transition to the benefit of building occupants, owners and the energy system. Improving energy performance and reducing energy demands are even more relevant in the context of the REPowerEU Plan to rapidly reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels and accelerate the green transition. BuildON seeks to develop a highly replicable, generic solution to deliver intelligent building services, facilitate the integration of heterogeneous systems and technologies, and help Build the next generatiON of Smart buildings. The main objective of BuildON is to develop and demonstrate a Smart Transformer Toolbox at TRL8 to plan and achieve improved energy performance applicable to the broadest range of building typologies and smart readiness levels via a comprehensive demonstration campaign involving five representative real-life use cases. This toolbox will offer affordable, adaptative, close-to-market and easy-to-install SRI-aligned services to continuously Monitor, Assess, Predict and Optimise (MAPO services) a building’s performance. A unified representation of the building, exposed through a Universal Building API, will abstract all field-level communication complexity, allowing the energy devices’ homogeneous real-time monitoring and control. Moreover, the generation of (Maturity Level 3 and 4) Digital Twins will allow simulation and control of a building and its systems. User-friendly decision support and user empowerment tools for facility managers and occupants will be part of the toolbox to explore, understand and expand their buildings' smart capabilities. By providing a unified approach to interacting with buildings, the floor is offered to develop a building app store that significantly accelerates the Smart Transformation of existing and new buildings

Worldwide Data centers (DC) are estimated to account for 1 to 2% of electricity usage. Regarding the European context, it is expected that data centres will account for 98.5 TWh/year in 2030. So it is evident that there is an important potential to recover waste heat from the cooling processes of DCs. The THUNDER project aims to overcome existing barriers hampering a wide adoption of DCs waste heat recovery strategies, providing an innovative, efficient and cost attractive Seasonal Thermal storage based on Thermochemical Materials. THUNDER solutions stretch across the value chain (data centre innovative storage providers, heat pump manufacturers and district energy company operators). The THUNDER solutions will be validated in field conditions at the Demosite in Bulgaria where the practice of WHR from DC is not widely diffused thus boosting the market also in those areas. Deepened replicability assessment will be done and pre-feasibility analysis developed in 10 further Demosites across all over Europe. Co-design and training workshops will be organized at the replicability identified sites to promote stakeholders engagement and social awareness thus unlocking barriers and make it real THUNDER replication.

ECOFACT aims at enabling manufacturing industries to optimize the energy performance of their production systems in line with their relevant production constraints (time and resources), while at the same time introducing a novel green marketing approach through the concept of energy and environmental signature of the manufactured products from a life-cycle perspective. These results will be achieved from a data-driven approach thanks to the uptake of advanced ICT technologies, while better adapting to the consumer demands through customized sustainable production. The core of the ECOFACT platform as such, will be built at this high-level (Apps&Services) layer in a multi-service approach providing an innovative holistic combination of functionalities for advanced energy-efficient, sustainable process/product design and manufacturing management.

SENERGY NETS aims at demonstrating the technical and economic capability of multi-energy systems to decarbonize the heating and cooling, power and gas sectors through renewable energy sources produced locally as well as sector integration, by primarily focusing on promising infrastructure and business models. To do so, SENERGY-NETS will develop a set of tools and platforms (up to TRL7/8) aimed to optimise the planning of District Heating and Cooling as well as distribution grids with sector coupling consideration and allow the provision of flexibility services to Distribution and Transmission System Operators. These solutions will be implemented on three pilot sites located in Milan (IT), Ljubljana (SI) and Paris (FR) and their replicability will be tested in two additional real case studies presenting alternative climatic, economic and geographic conditions in Vsters (SW) and Cordoba (ES). The SENERGY NETS solutions will be adapted to the main stakeholders at the different phases of the projects development involving sector coupling: long term planning, design and simulation, operational planning, valorisation, evaluation and replication. The project will evaluate the benefits through a consolidated methodology developed to estimate the overall value created by sector integration, relying on the current economic, regulation and market rules and assess the impacts on the European power system. SENERGY NETS relies on a strong trans-disciplinary consortium involving 17 organisations located in 7 European countries, involving renowned experts from public authorities, infrastructure providers, research institutions, entrepreneurs and consumers associations. Altogether, they will provide the necessary knowledge, expertise and capacities to develop, demonstrate and evaluate developed tools and services enabling the integration of multi-energy systems to provide flexibility to the power system, and ultimately enable the decarbonisation of the energy system.