Drive 0 sister project HOUSEFUL proposes an innovative paradigm shift towards a circular economy for the housing sector. The main goal is to develop and demonstrate an integrated systemic service (HOUSEFUL Service) composed of 11 circular solutions co-created by stakeholders in current housing value chain. The HOUSEFUL Service will aim at the circular management and efficient use of water, waste, energy and material resources for all stages of European building’s life-cycle.
HOUSEFUL approach will be demonstrated at a large scale in 4 demo-sites in Austria and Spain, adapting the concept to different scenarios, including social housing buildings. The project’s solutions will be evaluated from an environmental (Life Cycle Assessment), economic (Life Cycle Cost) and social (Social Assessment) point of view. Over the course of the project, 10 European Follower buildings will be engaged with the support of a Collaborative Community of Housing Experts to replicate HOUSEFUL results and maximise the impact of the project.
HOUSEFUL started in May 2018 and will run until October 2022. Visit the project website.
Drive 0 sister project StepUP develops affordable solutions and technologies aimed at transforming the energy renovation market and making the decarbonisation of existing buildings a reliable, attractive and sustainable investment.
The project “uses occupants’ feedback and promotes an iterative approach to energy renovation, based on real and simulated data, which minimises performance problems, reduces financial barriers and optimises investments”, states the coordinator of the project from Integrated Environmental Solutions Ltd, Giulia Barbano.
Two public deliverables have been produced, including the description of the StepUP renovation methodology in its current development stage and a review of the data collection infrastructure and protocol for data collection in line with StepUP methodology. Both documents are available for download and feedback is appreciated through the project’s website.
BUS-GoCircular understands the importance of a green energy workforce within the construction sector. The 30 month-long project was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and started in September 2021.
The overall aim of BUS-GoCircular is to address and overcome the challenges of the stimulation of demand for green energy skilled workforce, along with hands-on capacity building to increase the number of skilled workforce across the value chain. BUS-GoCircular will achieve this objective by developing and implementing a circular construction skills qualification framework with a focus on multifunctional green roofs, façades and interior elements.
The H2020 CINDERELA project aims to untap the potential of waste and recovered materials by developing and demonstrating a new business model (CinderCEBM) to assist companies in setting up successful circular economy business cases based on waste-to-resource opportunities. The business model will be accompanied by a “one-stop-shop” (CinderOSS) service offering all that companies need to know for manufacturing and application of SRM-based construction materials in buildings and civil engineering works.
Circular Construction in Regenerative Cities (CIRCuIT) is a collaborative project running from 2019-2023 and involves 31 ambitious partners across the built environment chain in Copenhagen, Hamburg, the Helsinki Region and Greater London.
Funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, the project will support the creation of regenerative cities by implementing sustainable and circular construction practices.
The CityLoops project brings together seven European cities – Apeldoorn, Bodø, Mikkeli, Porto, Seville, Høje-Taastrup and Roskilde – to pilot a series of demonstration actions to close the loop of two of the most important waste streams in Europe: Construction and Demolition Waste, and Bio-waste. Their ultimate aim is to become circular cities in which no resource goes to waste, driving the transition to the circular economy.
Color Circle is an Interreg Europe project aiming at connecting and empowering local authorities with research capacities to unlock the full potential of circular economy. It brings together 6 partners from 5 different countries, regional and local councils, public development agencies and universities, sharing good practices on circular economy, involving research capacities to empower local authorities and improving regional public policies.
The main goal of the ENSNARE project is to boost the implementation of NZEB renovation packages in Europe, with a focus on residential buildings. To accomplish this objective, the project develops two main technologies: Building components and digital solutions. The deployment of these two is founded in two key structures developed within ENSNARE:
The ICEBERG project aims to develop and demonstrate novel cost-effective circular smart solutions for an upgraded recovery of secondary building raw materials along the entire circular value chain: from end-of-life building materials (EBM) to new building products prepared for circularity, resource-efficiency and containing 30wt% to 100wt% of high-purity (>92%) recycled content. This will be undertaken through 6 pilot circular case studies, covering building materials accounting for more than 85% by weight of the European built environment.
The deep renovation of residential buildings has emerged as an essential step towards the reduction of buildings’ total primary energy consumption. The EU-funded PLURAL project will design and validate a set of flexible, adaptable, scalable, off-site prefabricated plug and play façade components, the Plug-and-Use (PnU) kits. It will deliver optimal practice, deep renovation examples for post-war residential buildings in different European climates. Partners will evaluate three key systems that couple heating-cooling, ventilation, and heat-harvesting systems with smart windows, 3D printing, low carbon footprint and nano-empowered coating materials. PLURAL relies on building information modelling, or BIM, Big Data management platform and a decision support tool to achieve optimal component selection and integration, perfect PnU kit design, and fast and low-cost manufacturing and installation.
This three-year Horizon 2020 project focused on the market up-take on energy efficiency and was coordinated by the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna. ABRACADABRA stands for Assistant Buildings’ addition to Retrofit, Adopt, Cure And Develop the Actual Buildings up to zeRo energy, Activating a market for deep renovation.
ABRACADABRA was based on the prior assumption that non-energy related benefits play a key role in the deep renovation of existing buildings. In particular, actions focused on the following main benefit: the generation of a substantial increase of the real estate value of the buildings through significant energy and architectural transformation (mainly integration of Renewable Energy Sources systems with new volume additions or new buildings’ construction) to go beyond the minimum energy performance and aim at achieving Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEBs).
