The 2018 EPBD update identifies deep renovation as key to drastically reduce energy demand and achieve the EU vision of a decarbonised building stock by 2050. The technology to achieve this reduction is available on the market today. Renovation rates are still far from the target 3% and shallow retrofits persist with low impacts on energy consumption. StepUP will develop a new process for deep renovation for decarbonisation, with fast design to operation feedback loops to minimise performance gap and optimise investments. The project will deliver plug&play technologies for minimal disruption, interconnected for maximum impact on energy, costs, IEQ and user comfort. The new iterative approach to renovation, based in big data for continuous performance improvement, will reduce financial barriers and make decarbonisation of existing buildings a reliable, attractive investment. StepUP will: 1. Make renovation more attractive and reliable with a new methodology based on near-real time data intelligence to identify cost-optimal, high impact interventions at any stage of the building life; 2. Reduce the performance gap to 10% via an integrated life-cycle software platform to plan renovation steps, identify high value ECM, improve IEQ, integrate RES (including storage) and optimise operations by constantly refining and verifying targets and constraints; 3. Minimise time on site to 40% by advancing innovative technologies for deep renovation to a market-ready renovation package of Plug & Play Technologies, including RE generation and storage for decarbonisation; 4. Optimise renovation investments via innovative financing models for optimisation of energy, comfort and cost performance over the building life, based on progressive financing and building performance as a service; 5. Accelerate the renovation market via an open protocol for interoperability of the StepUP solutions with third party market products, fostering a plug&play environment accessible to innovative SMEs.

EEnvest aims at supporting investors´ decision making process by translating building’s energy efficiency technical requirements into economic indicators. These indicators are in turn used to evaluate financial risks associated with deep renovation investment and to include non-energy benefits in asset evaluation models. EEnvest will allow the financial sector to match the EE investments demand and offer for commercial office buildings located in Italy and Spain. EEnvest will increase financers’, investors’, owners’ and users’ mutual trust, by identifying, quantifying and mitigating technical risks associated to those investments as well as by reducing the cost of credit for lenders through targeted risk reduction actions. EEnvest will develop effective evaluation methods for the technical/financial risk correlation by categorising a number of major technical risks and quantifying their impact on investors´ confidence. Those risks will be i) evaluated exploiting existing databases on building energy efficiency (e.g. DEEP database of Energy Efficincy Financial Institutions Group), ii) organized into investor friendly bechmark track record and iii) transferred on a web-based platform through secured blockchain networks The investment demand and offer will be supported by the EEnvest - search&match investment evaluation web-based platform, integrating building stock evaluation data, both from the technical and the financial side. EEnvest approach will be replicable in more countries and business cases thanks to the standardization of technical/financial due diligence framework for energy efficiency renovation of buildings and to the search&match web-based platform allowing deep renovation investments to be more appealing on the financial market.

IMPRESS will develop three different prefabricated panels for buildings: (i) a polyurethane based insulated panel with improved thermal performance and light radiation and (ii) a thin, lightweight pre-cast concrete sandwich panel, with optimum thermal and weathering resistance, both of which are suitable for overcladding; (iii) a lightweight pre-cast concrete sandwich panel incorporating Phase Change Materials (PCM) to adapt the thermo-physical properties of the building envelope and enable optimum passive heating and cooling benefits, suitable for recladding. Innovative nano/micro particle based coatings, suitable for 3D printing, will be also developed to achieve anti-corrosion resistance, high mechanical strength, improved solar reflectance, improved ageing resistance and anti-vandalism properties. To create the panels, an innovative manufacturing process will be created that includes Reconfigurable Moulding (RM) techniques, 3D laser scanning and 3D printed technology. In addition, 3D printed microstructured formworks will be developed as permanent external layer for the polyurethane panel to match the existing building aesthetics and provide solar radiation efficiency. The overall manufacturing process will (i) allow for mass production of panels, which take into account complex architectural and aesthetic issues, (ii) allow for faster production while lowering prefabrication costs and (iii) develop new controlled and cost effective solutions. IMPRESS will also develop a new Iterative Design Methodology, which will incorporate all stages of the Design-Construct-Install-Operate process. This will be integrated with a BIM cloud based database focussing on the interoperability between software tools required for the prefabricated process. Furthermore, new penalty based business models will be investigated. The final result will be demonstrated on two existing buildings where final as-built product performance will be validated against the initial design.

This project will develop sound methods for future climate change data for building designers to use for new buildings and refurbishments, most of which will last to the end of this century. The outputs will primarily be: academic papers and a draft for a Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, CIBSE, Technical Memorandum, suitable for practising designers; case studies to validate the new weather data design methodology and assess the potential adaptation of new and refurbished buildings to reduce carbon emissions. This TM will also be useful for CIBSE to use to determine a consistent future weather design methodology and future data for its new Design Guide, which is the fundamental document used by Building Services Engineers for designing buildings and their services. It is a supporting document for the Government's Building Regulations. The basis for this CIBSE data will be the new UK Climate Impacts Programme, UKCIP, future scenarios due in 2008, UKCIP08, with probabilities of various future weather outcomes for this century.To ensure that the new, probabilistic outputs will be useful to professionals, and to reflect best practice in design, there will be strong stakeholder involvement through the formation of a Stakeholders Group, via CIBSE, (Weather Task Force and collaborating consultancies), the Manchester-led EPSRC SCORCHIO project, (looking at urban heat island and climate change vulnerability, with contacts to UKCIP and the Tyndall Centre), architects and software houses. Policy makers will be reached via the Stakeholder Group Corresponding Members linked to the Department for Communities and Local Government and their contractors, including BRE. Risk levels will be assessed and data provided to enable designers to use the data with confidence. This bottom-up approach will serve to inform policy makers of what can be achieved practically. In addition there will be numerous case studies for validating the new methodology andTo provide this consistency, a novel method will be developed which will allow UKCIP08 scenarios and probabilistic weather data to be the basis of design which takes into account coincident weather parameters, e.g. solar radiation, air temperature, wind speed and direction. It is known that solar and air temperature have profound and sometimes differing influences on the comfort and carbon emissions of the building and that design values in the Guide are not necessarily coincident. Thus the hottest summer (or summer day) may well not be the sunniest summer (or day). New building design indices will be developed, with the aid of the current building designs contributed by members of the Stakeholder Group and collaborators. Solar radiation data, not covered in detail in the HadRM3 and UKCIP02 models, will be developed to satisfy designers' requirements. Likewise wind data, although the confidence level will be lower. It will be crucial to include wind data since wind drives natural ventilation. Rainfall duration and quantity are also important in the building design process because of drainage and rain penetration damage and designers' requirements will again be reviewed.Urban heat island effects, (where the urban areas are often hotter than the nearby rural areas), briefly mentioned in the present Guide, will be developed from the EPSRC SCORCHIO work to provide more realistic urban weather data. Local modification or downscaling will also be applied to generate data for other sites in the UK. This will enable the new Guide to cover more than the current 14 sites for which data were developed by Manchester for CIBSE