BUILD UP

This year marks the 15thEuropean Sustainable Energy Week EUSEW. Under the circumstances with Covid-19 the event was adapted to provide a dynamic, interactive and carefully organised online format. This effort has proved successful with more than 6300 registered participants and 4600 active online participants.

Every month, BUILD UP highlights publications covering a specific topic. August’s Topic of the Month is ‘Building operation’. The website is already available for contributions and BUILD UP’s editorial board is eager to receive your discussion papers, news and articles.

For the 6th edition of the expert talks series, the interviewee is Christophe Sykes, Director General at Construction Products Europe AISBL. The questions addressed in this edition relate to the pathways to recovering from the 2020 coronavirus crisis and the provisions for the building sector included in the Green Deal and associated European policies and regulations.

The coronavirus pandemic has put the spotlight on Europe’s housing crisis, exposing the shortcomings of our housing policies, which have increased inequalities and destabilised our societies. Now, the ‘stay at home’ guidelines have pushed us more than ever before to take stock of the state of housing.

A new IEA policy review from the International Energy Agency states that the EU is strengthening its efforts to make its energy systems cleaner and more resilient, reinforcing its global leadership in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Just Transition Platform has been launched to help Member States to draw up their territorial Just Transition Plans and access funding provided by the over EUR 150 billion Just Transition Mechanism. This online platform will provide technical and advisory support for public and private stakeholders in coal and other carbon-intensive regions.

The discussion paper outlines the urgent need to increase the pace and scale of investment in sustainable renovation programmes, provides case studies on previous renovation waves that were introduced in stimulus packages, and offers principles and suggestions to facilitate the mobilisation of resources towards sustainable renovation programmes.

This report presents a comparison of 8 scenarios achieving more than a 50 % reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990, and 16 scenarios aiming for climate neutrality by 2050. This is similar to the ambitions presented in the European Green Deal.

The aim of renovating this residential building included the conservation of the ancient walls of the medieval castle, and incorporating modern comfort standards to create a building boasting a high standard of energy efficiency (i.e. the NZEB standard).

The building is the workplace for 500 employees on three floors covering an area of approximately 10 ,000 m2. The construction’s location and orientation have been determined according to the microclimatic conditions and in order to maximise the use of the natural resources available in the area.

The aim of SHEERenov is to develop and test a model for the provision of integrated residential renovation services in the territory of Sofia in Bulgaria. The implementation of this project will support the Bulgarian government's intended transition from the current multifamily buildings energy efficiency renovation model, financed fully from public resources and administered entirely by public institutions, to a market oriented model.

The Green Growth Knowledge Partnership is a global network of experts and organisations dedicated to providing the policy, business, and finance communities with knowledge, guidance, data and tools to transition to an inclusive green economy.

The aim of Superhomes2030 is to dramatically scale up the Superhomes offer (a concept developed by TEA) in Ireland from a model which completed 100/€6m worth of retrofits per annum in 2019 to 500/€36m per annum by 2023, and 3 000/€150m per annum by 2030 (10 % of national target).

Women driving the passive house industry is the iPHA’s newest interview series, which, aims to highlight the remarkable women working in the passive house community. The iPHA team interviewed a handful of the many women who have contributed substantially to the growth of the passive house standard around the world. Here is our first interview featuring Ann-Marie Fallon.

Three Horizon 2020 projects – QualDeEPC, U-Cert and X-tendo – come together in this webinar to present issues related to current Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) schemes in Europe and potential solutions to shift from just an informative tool to a multifaceted one supporting all stakeholders in the value chain, e.g. call-to-action, quality assurance.

The webinar presented three BIMplement tools and methodologies developed by the Horizon 2020 project BIMplement to promote learning through BIM in the working place, such as the construction sites on the two areas of building airtightness and ventilation.

CYPETHERM Improvements is a tool for energy audits and the analysis of improvement measures in buildings. It has been developed and improved within the H2020 project RenoZEB and released by the company CYPE. Its main objective is to compare the energy performance of a building before and after renovation.

The CRAVEzero project aims to increase the viability of nearly-zero-energy buildings through solutions and tools to support cost reduction during the life cycle of buildings. In particular, one of the backbones of the project is the CRAVEzero pinboard, a structured platform that includes all the tools and supporting materials developed within the project.

ICEEE2020 focuses on energy, environment and the economics of energy systems and their applications. The conference will provide a forum for both researchers and academicians around the world to present original research papers.

The 35th PLEA Conference, organised from the University of A Coruña, will take place online between the 1st and 3rd of September 2020. Don't miss your chance to be part of this global discourse on sustainable architecture and urban design.

The conference addresses all the aspects of sustainability from different perspectives and research areas. The meeting always attracts a substantial number of participants from all over the world.

The European Week of Regions and Cities is the biggest annual Brussels-based event dedicated to regional policy. The event has grown to become a unique communication and networking platform, bringing together regions and cities from all over Europe.