EU-GUGLE

Lessons Learnt after 6 years of project

Florencio Manteca

National Renewable Energy Centre of Spain - CENER

December 11th 2018; Madrid, Spain

EU-GUGLE Final Conference

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•6 Pilot cities: AACHEN, BRATISLAVA, MILAN,

SESTAO, TAMPERE, VIENNA

•2 associated cities: GOTHENBURG, GAZIANTEP

• 21 partners (9 different countries)

•198,000 m² of living space renovated

• Target: up to 82% primary energy savings

• 6 years (2013 – 2019)

The EU-GUGLE project

European cities serving as Green Urban Gate towards

Leadership in sustainable Energy

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EU-GUGLE project: OBJECTIVE:

To achieve 40 – 80 % primary energy savings per district, and to

increase 25 % the share of renewable supplied in the buildings,

Sharing latest research results especially of retrofitting

technologies and intelligent RES integration into buildings.

Taking the building-users and its public space as the connective

environment to the project, with special attention to

vulnerable groups and behavioral challenges.

Establishing adequate business environment favorable for Smart

City demonstrations

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LESSONS LEARNT AFTER 6 YEARS:

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EU-GUGLE Technical achievements

• Within the EU-GUGLE project, several innovative solutions have been

demonstrated in the 6 districts. Some examples include:

• Addition of high efficient insulation in the building envelope, with innovative

techniques (i.e. glue free insulation in Milan), and thermal bridges reduction.

• Substitution of windows and frames (triple glasses in coldest cities)

• High performance ventilation systems with heat recovery.

• Integration of hybrid technologies (i.e. heat recovery in exhaust air + solar

collectors + district heating) in Tampere.

• Centralised heat pump with heat recovery in the sewage network in Aachen.

• Biobased material renovation in Sestao

• RES integration in the retrofitted buildings: photovoltaics, solar thermal,

geothermal, …

• Pre-fabricated multi active façade in Vienna

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EU-GUGLE Technical achievements

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EU-GUGLE Technical achievements

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Lessons learnt: technical issues (I)

• The energy refurbishment of districts is not, generally speaking, a technical

challenge. The technology is available, but…

• still there are not many tailored-for-renovation concepts available, and the usual

solutions used for new buildings are expensive in the retrofitting market. This lead

us very often to design “ad-hoc” solutions for each case…

• … but non-standard solutions for technologies and systems require know-how

and experience of specialists and qualified engineers, which also means time and

money. Moreover, to replicate these tailored solutions in other buildings is not

easy.

• This bring us to the first conclusion: the strong need of

standardization of refurbishment oriented solutions, with

a relevant component of industrialization.

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Lessons learnt: technical issues (II)

• The planning and building process must be designed with and integrated

approach to avoid difficulties coming later during building works or in operation.

• Need of establishment a efficient Innovation Ecosystem with the stakeholders.

Good solutions need good trustful collaboration between the involved players.

The time used for discussions, analysis and research for the better solutions is

probably the best invest you can do in a district renovation project.

• After the building works… there are still things to improve: challenges in the

operation and maintenance of innovative systems, because of lack of experience

of the O&M managers and because the usual maintenance contracts don’t

address properly the innovative systems.

•There is a clear need of training in all players in the value chain about energy

efficiency techniques and solutions: from architects (including municipal

technicians), engineers, building companies, blue-collar workers,…)

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Lessons learnt: legal / administrative issues (I)

• Procedural barriers which make difficult to obtain subsidies in most of the EU-

GUGLE countries. There are subsidies available but the way to apply for them and

to justify it is too often a cumbersome process which a chilling effect.

• Need to strong cooperation between different departments within the

municipalities. This is a big challenge. The cities which have shown a better

management of the deep renovation of the districts have been those which have a

specific “energy efficiency unit”. The ones who not, have had more difficulties to

understand and manage the innovation process.

• Generaly speaking, aesthetics aspects have more weight than energy efficient

ones, i.e. barriers to install solar energy systems in some places.

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Lessons learnt: legal / administrative issues (II)

• Current procedures for public procurement make difficult to introduce technologic

innovation in the building works, because the innovative solutions have to compete

in prices with the non-innovative ones. Usually the winner bid is the cheaper one.

Need to implement Innovative Public Procurement procedures.

• Legal barriers or legal vacuum on RES integration, smart metering (personal data

protection). High bureaucracy load

• In social housing and buildings for lease, the payment structure between end-

users, housing company and energy provider often doesn’t incentive energy saving.

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Lessons learnt: Economic issues

• Despite of the subsidies available, the building owners have to self finance the

highest part of the retrofitting costs (in EU-GUGLE from 65% to 85%). This is the

main barrier for private owners, and requires new business and financial models

tailored made for district regeneration projects.

• In the case of moderate renovations (i.e. replacement of HVAC systems without

renovating the thermal envelope), the money to save in the energy bill may be a

driver, but in deep renovation projects, this is not enough (pay back time more than

20 years).

• To try to justify the need of a deep refurbishment considering it a financial

instrument usually doesn’t work.

Aachen 421 85% 0% 15%

Bratislava 243 79% 0% 21%

Milan 909 65% 29% 6%

Sestao 417 76% 19% 5%

Tampere 235 79% 2% 19%

Vienna 789 79% 15% 6%

National

subsidyEU-grantPilot

Total Investment

costs (VAT incl.) €/m2 Self-financing

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Lessons learnt: Economic issues

• EU-GUGLE has shown the effectiveness of public – private partnerships, and

the need to find innovative financial schemes and mechanisms (i.e. green loans or

energy efficient mortgages).

• And find the right balance between home owners investments, public subsides,

other financing instruments, together with a regulatory scenario favourable to energy

retrofitting, with adequate and affordable long-term financial plans.

• but also the need to find innovative approaches with private companies (ESCO´s,

utilities, building companies) looking for win – win situations (i.e Vienna pilot)

• EU-GUGLE also shown the importance of find the right scale of intervention. There

are individual interventions that are not profitable for the industry but, in an

aggregated approach – at district scale – the economy of scale may convert the

project in something attractive for the industry.

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Lessons learnt: Societal issues

• The main lesson learnt is the need of activate as active players in the process the

different key people and associations in the community. Find the Champions who

can drive the actions and bring him into the loop.

• The level of awareness and information about energy efficiency at domestic scale

is very poor. There is a lot of work to be done here.

• In the renovation of private owned dwellings, the key issue is to provide a high

level of trust with the end users. A direct and continuous contact with them is a

good tool to generate this trustful environment. Early information to end users is

essential in order to get their acceptance of refurbishment measures

• User behaviour is a key issue for the result of energy efficient buildings. If the end

users are not able to use the systems properly, the performance values are

decreasing. Therefore the communication, rise awareness and training of the

tenants and flat home owners is maybe the most important factor to succeed.

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Lessons learnt: Societal issues

Citizen engagement and participation. Key issue for a successful

district urban regeneration project

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On behalf of the EU-GUGLE team,

Thank you for your attention !

fmanteca@cener.com

www.cener.com

www.eu-gugle.eu