One of the principal challenges to increasing energy efficiency investments (EEI) is the lack of statistical data on the actual energy and costs savings achieved with them. Data is still hard to access because it is decentralized and in different formats. Consequently, only a small part of this can be used to produce reliable empirical evidence on the performance of the EEI. EN-TRACK will meet this challenge by enabling an interoperable ecosystem of data and tools supporting building refurbishment decision making, putting it into practice with the financial sector. EN-TRACK builds on an existing infrastructure enabling massive data gathering, making the data comparable and interoperable with other existing databases, analysing this data and offering relevant results to key stakeholders. This will support better (more informed, more transparent and faster) decision-making, contribute to the de-risking of investments in energy efficiency in buildings and facilitate process of closing investment deals. Enabling interoperability with most currently active databases and tools (DEEP, eQuad, EnerInvest, etc.) will lead to an unambiguous data exchange based services ecosystem with low transactional costs. This is a big step towards making energy efficiency investments a mainstream activity of the financial sector. EN-TRACK is a three-year project that will directly involve over 35 financial institutions and 100 key stakeholders with a buildings stock investment capacity of over 442M€, trigger over 23M€ in investments and expects to be achieving annual savings of over 38GWh/yr and 17ktCO2eq/yr by the end of the project. EN-TRACK will become self-sustainable and x10 expansion 5 years post-project is anticipated. The EN-TRACK consortium is a team of 7 from 5 EU countries that includes data and analytical skills, buildings access, leading figures in the energy efficiency financing field, links to the key initiatives (DEEP, EEFIG, etc.), and professional communications skills.

One of the principal challenges to reaching targets of the Energy Transition (ET) is to improve the coordination between local authorities and regional governments with the aim to enhance decision-making process, coherence and consistency of the implementation of energy transition measures (ETM). ePLANET will meet this challenge by encouraging the digitalization of measures and plans enabling an interoperable ecosystem of data and tools supporting energy transition decision making, putting it into practice by the public sector. ePLANET builds on an existing infrastructure enabling massive data gathering, making the data and measures comparable and interoperable with existing local initiatives (CoM, Clean Energy for EU Islands Initiative) and regional/national plans, analysing this data and offering relevant results to key stakeholders. This will enhance decision-making -more informed, more transparent and faster decisions-, contributing to improved monitoring and verification schemes. Enabling harmonisation of plans and interoperability across the local and regional authorities to joint application of ETM favouring more efficient use of public spending. ePLANET is a three-year project that will develop a proof of concept over three regional pilots (Girona, Crete and Zlín regions) during the first half of the project, to ensure the correct deployment of developed tools and to fit the real needs of public authorities in the energy transition. The rest of the project will focus on extending and implementing the ePLANET tools and methodology across Europe. To ensure new regions and local authorities’ engagement, the project will leverage existing initiatives (CoM and ManagEnergy) in which the project partners have strong influence (ICLEI and FED in particular).

ChArGED addresses the energy consumption in public buildings and proposes a framework that aims to facilitate achieving greater energy efficiency and reductions of wasted energy in public buildings. The framework leverages IoT enabled, low-cost devices (NFC or iBeacons) to improve energy disaggregation mechanisms that provide energy use and (consequently) wastages at the device, area and end user level. These wastages will be targeted by a gamified application that feeds personalized real-time recommendations to each individual end user. The design of the game will follow a cleanweb approach and implement a novel social innovation process that will be designed based on human inceptives factors and will help users to understand the environmental implications of their actions and adopt a more green, active and responsible behaviour. The blend of social interaction and competitions with its personalized character are expected to eventually contribute to the user engagement and commitment to generate savings in the long term leading to tackle energy efficiency targets in public buildings while emphasizing on cost effectiveness. Furthermore, users will become more educated on energy efficiency actions and their impacts which has an impact beyond the actual public building. Efficient energy use will render its consumption predictable and this will be exploited by the ChArGED gamified application to optimize use of the micro-generated energy. Users will be motived to reduce energy consumption when power comes from the grid. Predictable energy consumption will also support more informed decisions of micro-generation sources to match the use patterns. The ChArGED solution will be developed with iterative end users representatives’ engagement during analysis, design and development. Further users at least 150 real building occupants in three (3) countries (50 in each building- validation country) will be engaged for deployment and validation.

EU countries have drawn up strategies reflected in their National Energy Efficiency Action Plans that include provision of an overview of the country's national building stock, identification of key policies that the country intends to use to stimulate renovations and provision of an estimate of the expected energy savings that will result from renovations. Despite the increase in the use of energy and the evident environmental benefits of having more share of renewable energy sources (RES) in buildings, the adoption of both energy efficiency measures and RES is highly influenced by its cost and the impact on occupants’ comfort. The real implementation of actions to reduce energy consumption in buildings is confronted with the complexity of managing their internal energy systems, the overall target of cost savings and the respect of the levels of comfort expected by the buildings occupants. The BIGG project aims at demonstrating the application of big data technologies and data analytic techniques for the complete buildings life-cycle of more than 4000 buildings in 6 large-scale pilot test-beds, achieved by: 1) The Open Source BIGG Data Reference Architecture 4 Buildings for collection/funneling, processing and exchanging data from different sources (smart-meters, sensors, BMS, existing data sets); 2) An interoperable buildings data specification, BIGG Standard Data Model 4 Buildings, based on the combination of elements from existing frameworks and EC directives, such as SAREF, INSPIRE, BIM, EPCHub that will be enhanced to reach full interoperability of building data; 3) An extensible, open, cloud-based BIGG Data Analytics Toolbox of service modules for batch and real-time analytics that supports a wide range of services, new business models and support reliable and effective policy-making. These solutions will be deployed and tested cross pilot and country validation of at least two business scenarios in Spain and Greece.

Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) is a proven model for modernizing mostly public buildings by ESCOs with guaranteed energy and cost savings. Nevertheless, a broad roll-out of EPC is being prevented mainly because of two unresolved issues: the split incentives dilemma and the lack of adequately flexible contract models. The guarantEE project will address prevailing barriers to EPC in a team of 14 experienced partners, covering large parts of Europe in a mix of advanced and emerging ESCO markets. Based on a concise market analysis, guarantEE will develop innovative business and financing models addressing and overcoming the split incentives dilemma in performance based ESCO projects. This will be done by adequately sharing costs and benefits between user, building owner and ESCO (triple-win approach), thus opening up new project opportunities. Furthermore, EPC contract variants will be elaborated and tested, addressing the need for enhanced flexibility (e.g. exit clauses, simplified M&V, future energy market needs, storage). The target groups are public and – especially in advanced EPC markets – private sector clients. The developed models will be applied in 33 pilot projects involving private and public building owners. The project will achieve 78 GWh PE and 18000 tCO2 savings per year and will trigger investments of >11 M€. Particularly in emerging EPC markets, guarantEE will support market development by providing standards, an online EPC pre-check, good practice examples, EPC information and project facilitation for mainly municipal clients. Broad dissemination activities, including the European Energy Service Award, will maximise the project visibility. The project will address or consult at least 1000 building owners and EPC facilitators and will inform at least 2000 energy sector stakeholders on EPC. The guarantEE project will unlock additional EPC project opportunities, contribute to standardisation, and provide political advice and steps towards a common energy service market in Europe.