ABRACADABRA is based on the prior assumption that non-energy-related benefits play a key role in the deep renovation of existing buildings. In particular, ABRA actions will focus on the creation of a substantial increase of the real estate value of the existing buildings through a significant energy and architectural transformation. The central goals of the proposal consist of an important reduction of the pay back time of the interventions, a strengthening of the key investors’ confidence, increasing quality and attractiveness of the existing buildings’ stock and, finally, reaching a concrete market acceleration towards the Nearly Zero Energy Buildings target. The actual investment gap in the deep renovation sector is due to the fact that high investments are required up-front and they are generally characterised by an excessively high degree of risk and long payback times. It is therefore necessary to develop harmonized, concerted and innovative actions to unlock the needed public and private funds, fill the energy efficiency investment gap and ultimately contribute to re-launch the construction market and create new jobs. Therefore, ABRA aims at demonstrating to the key stakeholders and financial investors the attractiveness of a new renovation strategy based on AdoRe, intended as one (or a set of) Assistant Building unit(s) - like aside or façade addictions, rooftop extensions or even an entire new building construction - that adopt the existing buildings (the Assisted Buildings). The creation of these new Assistant Buildings’ Additions integrated with Renewable Energy Sources aims at reducing the initial investment allocated for the deep renovation of the existing building creating an up-grading synergy between old and new. The ABRA strategy results in the implementation of a punctual densification policy that has been proven capable of fostering the investments in deep renovation of the existing built environment throughout Europe

RenoZEB aims to unlock the nZEB renovation market leveraging the gain on property value through a new systemic approach to retrofitting that will include innovative components, processes and decision making methodologies to guide all value-chain actors in the nZEB building renovation process; including integrated solutions with highest impact in the revalorization of the building. This will be achieved through: (a) Development of an innovative holistic, cost-effective and fast deep retrofitting methodology fornZEB. (b)Supporting the methodology for nZEB renovation, through ICT tools. (c) Development of a cost-effective and non-intrusive prefabricated multifunctional modular “plug and play” system for the renovation of buildings, (d) Increasing the post-retrofitting property value, through the transformation of buildings into an Active Energy. (e)Nodes through a smart control & monitoring system (f) New collaborative multi-value, multi-stakeholder methodologies and decision making process for selecting the best energy efficient renovation strategy. (g) Creation of new drivers of change for the Real Estate Industry creating fresh post-renovated property value schemes. (h) Demonstration to the Market of the Replicability of the Holistic Methodology and New Technologies through. (i) Three Virtual Demonstration sites. (j) Boosting the NZEB market through training and awareness of the value chain. RenoZEB addresses all the relevant aspects from the call, but also many of the issues expressed in the work programme. RenoZEB will provide cost-effective plug&play solutions for a large scale deep NZEB rehabilitation schemes, ensuring the integrability of all its components, methodologies, training, guidelines, and demonstration cases (real and virtual) that show and ensure the replicability of the schemes, and technical tools to appropriately address the valorization of the building stock before and after nZEB renovation schemes are applied.

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.

This project will extend the successful standardization approach of the Investor Confidence Project beyond buildings and into Industry and Infrastructure. It will utilize a similar approach to the Horizon 2020 funded ICPEU project which developed standardization for building energy efficiency projects. It will develop standardized Protocols and associated tools (Project Development Specifications, Index of National Resources and Templates) for energy efficiency projects in industry and infrastructure - specifically street lighting and district energy. It will have a European wide communications plan, as well as work in five specific countries, building on the work of ICPEU. It will also develop and deploy trainings for Project Developers and Quality Assurance providers. Using the eco-system of Project Developers and its own networks the project will engage with project developers to certify projects and programmes as being Investor Ready Energy Efficiency (IREE). It will dedicate technical assistance resources to helping project owners and project developers to adopt IREE. It will also dedicate specific resources to working with financial institutions to help them incorporate IREE into their investment and lending procedures.

DREEAM aims to demonstrate replicable Net Zero Energy residential building renovation approaches achieving 75% total Net Energy Demand reduction- an improvement of 60% to state of the art market practices. It will utilise packages of interconnected energy systems that achieve a balance between energy efficiency and renewable energy measures. This is enabled by enhancing renewable technologies capacity factors by using advanced building management systems with machine learning algorithms that allow building system integration and auto-optimisation across building dimensions. Currently, deep energy renovations mainly focus on building-level solutions, where, cost-effectively, an energy demand reduction of 40-50% can be achieved. In district scale projects, technologies for energy generation, storage and management can be integrated cost-effectively, reducing up to an additional 25-35% of Net Energy Demand. Multi-owner complexities and need for tailored system integration make this approach location-specific and hard to replicate. A focus on multi-building, single owner situations seeks the appropriate balance for both high energy demand reduction and high market replication potential. Energy Load Management technologies (ICT based building systems management) and services that are successfully piloted in commercial buildings will be adapted to enable this approach. The approach is a breakthrough in reaching widely applicable and replicable pathways for near-NZEB residential building renovation, in particular for social and public housing, which accounts for 12% of European stock, or 25 million units. Building owners that jointly own 160,000 dwellings, energy service engineers and finance experts collaborate to demonstrate the DREEAM approach in 3 climatologically different locations, and initiate replication in 15 more locations within the project duration. Partnership with city-, owner- and innovation networks allows dissemination to 60% of the target market.