The PentaHelix project is focusing on developing and testing a new approach for integrating multi-governace planning for sustainable energy, both horisontal and vertical, togeheter with a close interaction with key stakeholders in energy efficiency and sustaianble energy solutions such as the industry and business, building sector, NGO's, academia and individual citizens or relevant associations. The project aims at developing a peer-to-peer online platform for SECAP development that can be used for multiple public authorities in joint planning and implementation. This will enable the integration of different administrative levels and geographical planning areas as well as enhance the cost efficiency in the entire planning and implementation process based on economic of scale and closer cooperation and exchange. In addition regional PentaHelix Task forces will be established, involving key stakeholder and target groups, that will serve as a driver for a wider scope of the SECAPs as well as bringing in valuable insights and identification of potential measures, system solutions and a better understanding of drivers and barriers for a more sustainable society as a whole, in each specific region. This PentaHelix approach will be developed and tested in 8 pilot municipalities in Norway, Croatia, Belgium, Spain and Latvia. Each region is unique in terms of demography, economy, urban development, climate conditions and industrial/ businesss structure. Together these pilot areas consititutes a large number of inhabitants and potential mitigation of CO2 and energy savings. To further enhance the impact of the project a broad replication and dissemination strategy and actions will be rolled out in many countries in the EU. This will be mainly carried out towards neighboring regions as well as the network of ERRIN with it's many member organisations. Targeted dissemination actions will be implemented. 11 partners from 5 countries will do this during 36 months.

With over 80 million inefficient heating & cooling (HC) systems still installed across Europe motivating consumers to replace those units with more efficient, greener alternatives will be key for a decarbonised Energy Union fuelled by renewable energy. REPLACE therefore aims to improve coordination in local networks to implement replacement campaigns in ten target regions by means of action plans fortified with policy and business-related improvements. Based on lessons learnt from previous projects and sound on-the-ground research on stakeholders’ mind-sets, local working groups (LWGs) will connect all key actors in each region – local governments, consumer associations, developers, energy utilities and professional associations – to steer the direction of a wide range of replacement activities. For the first time, REPLACE will explicitly unite intermediaries, such as chimney sweepers or installers, who have constant access to consumers, and policy makers to develop common activities with maximum impact. REPLACE supports the LWGs by providing a communication framework and a rich toolbox of online and offline actions targeted to the needs of all relevant stakeholders. The “REPLACE Your Heating System Calculator” will be central in raising consumers’ and investors’ awareness of the monetary and wider benefits of HC replacements and develop real momentum towards collective actions. By making all materials openly accessible and highlighting success stories the uptake of activities can be multiplied beyond target regions. In addition, all activities will be firmly established within local policy programmes to ensure that the overall impact of REPLACE is sustainable and the networks forged during the action will continue beyond project life. Together with a dedicated focus on capacity-building measures and knowledge transfer REPLACE identifies and merges all elements necessary to successfully make heating and cooling for European consumers efficient and climate-friendly.

The decentralization of the energy system coupled with advancements on IoT, big data, AI and distributed computing are creating a new momentum for exploiting data-driven services to improve buildings energy efficiency. Despite a large number of buildings data hubs and vocabularies have become available, some barriers hamper the exploitation of that potential, such as the lack of interoperability among heterogeneous static (e.g.BIM), building automation and IoT dynamic data sources and ontologies, and the lack of interoperable big data architectures fully tailored to smart buildings. In that respect MATRYCS will i) deliver an open Reference Architecture for Smart Energy Efficient Buildings, which aligns BDVA SRIA, FIWARE architecture, SAREF, HAYSTACK, and BRICK schema vocabularies (among the many others), and enable B2B sovereignty preserving multi-party data exchange, while providing full interoperability of big data enablers with smart buildings standards and addressing privacy and cyber-security constraints ii) upscale a number of TRL 5-6 technology enablers, such as sovereignty-preserving DLT/off-chain data governance, big data pipeline orchestration, IoT/edge AI-based federated learning and visual analytics and deploy them within the TRL 7-8 MATRYCS workbench iii) deliver a TRL8 open modular big data cloud analytic toolbox as front-end for one-stop-shop analytics services development iv) validate such framework through the deployment of analytics services focusing on digital building twins, improved buildings operation, building infrastructure design, EU/national policy assessment for energy efficiency investments on 11 large scale pilots by different stakeholders (facility managers, ESCOs, financial institutions, construction companies, municipalities, electricity grid and DH operators, policy makers) v) setup the BDA Alliance as a vibrant data-driven ecosystem for attracting new data hubs and SME service providers, enabling thus EU-wise take-up and replication

Energy efficiency of buildings plays a paramount role in the European Commission (EC), who aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in Europe through a socially-fair transition in a cost-efficient manner. The role of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) to boost building energy renovation is widely considered crucial in the literature because they are fundamental to provide better information to all the actors involved in the building renovation process. Besides, EPCs can act as a link between the different types of actions (institutional, financial, others) that will be needed to accomplish the building renovation goals. The crossCert project will create a product testing methodology for the new EPC approaches that will result in: improved accuracy and usability of the EPCs, people-centric designs, and increased homogeneity across Europe. The crossCert project is based on a bottom-up approach, with the following stages: (1) Cross-testing among energy authorities of current EPCs and the new approaches/concepts/initiatives, using more than 140 buildings in 10 European countries, and creating a public benchmarking repository of test cases; (2) Comparing and analysing the results between different approaches; (3) Elaboration of policy recommendations, which will include potential improvements on the accuracy, usability and harmonisation; (4) Engaging networks and alliances for analysis and (5) for outreach. Beyond accuracy, usability and harmonization, crossCert will use the cross-assessment exercise to conduct research and issue guidelines on: training and education of certified EPC issuers; EPC promotion and marketing; adapting EPCs investor needs; linking next-generation of EPCs to energy audits, logbooks and Building Renovation Passports; and EPCs and one-stop shops for building renovation.