SmartBuilt4EU. Presentation of the first 4 White Papers on smart buildings during the Sustainable Places 2021 conference

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Nerea Gómez

Project Officer

2177 Last modified by the author on 19/10/2021 - 15:56
SmartBuilt4EU. Presentation of the first 4 White Papers on smart buildings during the Sustainable Places 2021 conference

SmartBuilt4EU aims to support the innovation ecosystem in the smart building value chain through networking and communication actions. The project fosters knowledge-sharing between ongoing R&D initiatives and develops a Strategic Research Agenda combined to policy recommendations to support the further uptake of smart buildings.

The project has recently presented its first batch of White Papers during the 9th edition of the Sustainable Places conference, celebrated from 28th September to 1st October in Rome (Italy).

The first 4 White Papers

SmartBuilt4EU open Task Forces investigate the key issues and trends related to smart buildings and identify state of the art, best practices, barriers, challenges and opportunities to support their uptake. Their collaborative work will feed a Strategic Research Agenda to be presented to the European Commission. It should thus guide the drafting of the next related calls of the Horizon Europe funding programme.

The four SmartBuilt4EU task forces were launched last March 2021 during an online workshop.

 

 

 

 

 

Each Task force investigates a specific topic during one semester. During the last 6 months, a collaborative process was set up to explore a first batch of topics, resulting in the production of the first 4 draft White Papers. After an open consultation, those papers were finalised, and presented during SP2021 (see below):

White Paper TF1 – “End user acceptance and attractiveness: Strategies to improve end-user awareness and acceptance of smart building functionalities” chaired by Alain Zarli (ECTP) and Vladimir Gumilar (SGG) with 23 contributors.

White Paper TF2 – “Interoperability: Interoperability among building components and systems” where 32 experts contributed with David Rua (INESC TEC) and Stijn Verbeke (VITO) as co-chairs.

White Paper TF3 – “Providing flexibility to power grids: Smart solutions and data interoperability to provide flexibility services to the electricity grid (e.g. smart grid-ready buildings)” with Olivier Genest (Trialog) and Federico Garzia (EURAC) as co-chairs and 16 contributors.

White Paper TF4 – “Smart financing & business models: New services and user-centric business models (incl. Building as a Service), integration of new enabling technologies for innovative business models (e.g. blockchain)” chaired by Emmanuel François (Smart Buildings Alliance) and Karine Laffont-Eloire (DOWEL Innovation) and the contribution of 16 experts.

Presentation of the next topics of the Task Forces

SmartBuilt4EU also took the opportunity to present the next topics during the sustainable Places Conference that will be investigated by the Task Forces during the next 6 months. The objective is to release the corresponding White Papers in April 2022. Their respective scopes are synthesised below:

SmartBuilt4EU at Sustainable Places 2021

SmartBuilt4EU (SB4EU) contributed to the 9th annual edition of Sustainable Places (SP2021), a hybrid event - both on-site and online - from 28th September to 1st October in Rome. The many opening and closing keynote sessions, parallel technical sessions and project-organized workshops explored many topics:

  • Buildings / renovation / energy performance      
  • Renewable energy technologies / platforms
  • Smart grids and cities / energy communities
  • Policies / certifications / behaviours
  • Circular economy / business models
  • BIM / Digitalisation / energy modelling

The SB4EU partners organized the workshop "Smart Buildings: Defining R&I Priorities":

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Its objective was to present the White Papers released on the first four topics investigated by our Task Forces (TF) in the past 6 months (End-users acceptance and attractiveness; Interoperability; Providing flexibility to electricity grids; Business models and smart financing), as well as to introduce the topics for the next 6 months. To finalise, two brainstorming sessions were organized in parallel in order to discuss the scope of the next topics and to gather some initial inputs.

The next workshop will be organised around March/ April 2022 (M18/19) to present the 2nd batch of White Papers (Topics B) and launch the Topics C with a first brainstorming session on the scope and relevant EU projects to be included.  Depending on the way this workshop will be designed (to ensure a maximum of active participation and to foster networking opportunities), the presentation of new projects joining the community and key takeaways of ending projects will be done either during the workshop or as a separate webinar.

SmartBuilt4EU also joined other sessions related to smart buildings, as is the case of the workshop “Fast Track on Energy Communities in Europe”, whose aim was to bring to the table and debate several experiences, developed methodologies, angles of observation, and lessons learned from a set of recent H2020, and Lighthouse projects. This workshop was divided in 3 sessions and SmartBuilt4EU took part in one of them, “Energy Community Technologies”, together with 7 other H2020 projects.

The sessions addressed relevant questions such as:

  • How to ensure replication is simple, effective and easy to adopt for technologies related to Energy Communities?  
  • How can information and communication technologies (ICT) and/or artificial intelligence (AI) support energy communities and citizen-centric energy systems?

The different visions shared during the session highlighted the importance of user engagement, technology at the users’ service, convenience, increased awareness and data-driven technologies.

Furthermore, SmartBuilt4EU participated in the "Building Energy Performance Certificates: The Enabler Smart Readiness Indicator" workshop, organized by REHVA (Federation of European Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Associations). It aimed at providing support to the European Commission services and the Member States in the upcoming SRI (Smart readiness Indicator) national testing and the ongoing development of the SRI method C (in-use smart performance – quantitative assessment). This was put in relation with the energy performance of buildings, the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), the Digital Building Logbooks, Renovation Roadmaps & Passports, Level(s), etc.

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