Earthquakes and energy consumption in Europe : what solutions ?
ProGETonE Project
15 European entities working together in the innovation project ProGETonE to deliver new ways to renovate buildings, by increasing their seismic safety, drastically reducing the energy consumption, while keeping a user-centred approach.
Nowadays, buildings in Europe are usually not prepared to face important earthquakes, except the ones built under recent building codes, just remember for example recent disasters caused in Italy during 2016, as in L'Aquila. There is a strong need to improve buildings safety in this regard, thus saving lives. One of the barriers of implementing safety measures is the high cost of a structural renovation. ProGETonE proposes a pre-fab approach to reduce these costs significantly.
On the other hand, today's dwelling stock represents 27% of EU total energy consumption, mainly burning fossil fuels. This fact is impacting our climate, undesirably rising temperature and causing current and future damage. Therefore, we also have an important need to save energy. ProGETonE is providing a decarbonisation strategy for existing buildings, by reducing energy needs and powering them with solar energy.
Finally, a high percentage of citizens is still to commit to energy savings targets; moreover, they are usually not involved in building renovation processes. A user-centred approach is not common praxis, but it can offer many benefits and reduce risks. ProGETonE includes building users' in the process to listen to their needs and to pass on the benefits of renovation, beyond energy savings.
To sum up, ProGETonE develops and proves an integrated approach to tackle two important needs in existing buildings: safety upgrades to face future earthquakes in seismic zones and nearly zero energy consumption to be aligned with EU climate change reduction targets. Residents in two pilot sites in Greece and the Netherlands will be involved in the design and implementation process from the beginning to consider their views and motivations, so as to deliver satisfying renovations for them and also spread them to other EU citizens.
ProGETonE stands for Proactive synergy of inteGrated Efficient Technologies on buildings’ Envelopes and has a total budget of 5 million euros including funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 723747.
The consortium developing the action is integrated by universities, technical consultants, manufacturers, SME's, public authorities and associations from 8 countries. The activities started with the recent project launch May 2017 and will last for 48 months up to April 2021.
CONTACT:
Annarita Ferrante Christoph Peters
(Project coordinator) (Communication)
University of Bologna (Italy) LIMA Association (Spain)
[email protected] [email protected]