X-tendo will support public authorities to transition to next-generation energy performance certification (EPC) schemes, including improved compliance, reliability, usability and convergence. The key output of the project will be the X-tendo toolbox, a freely available online knowledge hub that will be continued also beyond the project duration. It will contain 10 innovative EPC features ranging from a smartness and a comfort indicator to building logbooks and how to improve EPC databases. For each feature the toolbox will include: (1) solution concepts and good practice examples, (2) description of methodological approaches, (3) calculation tools, and (4) implementation guidelines and recommendations. A selection of twenty-nine test projects in nine different member states will demonstrate the potential of each feature as part of more reliable next-generation EPC schemes across the EU. Intensive stakeholder engagement, experience exchange activities, continuous dissemination and an ambitious exploitation strategy will maximize X-tendo’s impact across the EU. Direct impact on (future) policy making will be achieved by (1) understanding end-users and their needs, (2) engaging with public bodies covering at least 75% of the EU building stock, (3) close collaboration between policy makers and technical, communication and financial experts, (4) outreach to EU-wide initiatives such as the Concerted Action on the EPBD and the European Energy Network, and (5) assessing the viability of policy implementation. Improved and next-generation EPC schemes and the innovative handling and use of EPC-related data will push the market towards better performing buildings and facilitate the interaction between building owners, the construction industry and the finance sector. The combination of the expertise of the project partners and the actions and outputs of the project will steer EPC schemes across Europe to the next-generation requirements.

The ever-increasing use of building monitoring and control systems has created an opportunity for data-driven approaches in the entire construction sector. At the same time, interaction and interoperability among data platforms remain a challenging issue. MODERATE will formalize a set of procedures and techniques that enable building owners, policymakers, facility managers, utility companies, etc., to openly share their data, gain insights, and make decisions while complying with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Moreover, MODERATE will enable uniform access to heterogeneous data sources on buildings' performance, usually dispersed in several non-interoperable data silos. Although several projects have recently emerged to address the problem of defining a modular data architecture, they lack: - A protocol for data sharing and anonymization, complying with the rules defined by the GDPR while avoiding losing the statistical properties that make them valuable. - A solution enabling data owners to openly share their datasets while profiting both economically and in terms of knowledge on their data. - A fully open platform. Commonly, most of the results (data, algorithms, software, etc.) of a project are owned by partners within the consortium, making it very difficult to use them later without their permission. MODERATE will develop an open platform, embracing leading-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), blockchain/distributed ledger technologies, the internet of things (IoT), and many more. This platform will enable its users to analyze real-time building data from various building systems and provide insight into the many dimensions of a building's performance. The use of synthetic data generation techniques, not yet widely applied in the construction industry, is one of the elements that allow open data sharing, enabling more reliable services and generating business opportunities.

The EMB3Rs project will implement a bottom-up, user-driven and open source modelling platform to simulate alternative supply-demand scenarios for the recovery and reuse of industrial excess heat and cold (HC). EMB3Rs’ final users will employ the platform to determine the costs and benefits related with excess HC utilization routes, and to define the required implementation conditions for the most promising solutions. The platform will allow industrial users and other relevant stakeholders to autonomously and intuitively explore and assess the feasibility of new technology and business scenarios. This will benefit each individual producer/ consumer in a given industrial community but also enable win-win solutions between industries and final HC users in other sectors. The main aim is to reuse and/or trade excess thermal energy in a holistic perspective within an industrial process HC/energy system environment or framed in an HC network in regulated or liberalized markets. The resource and energy intensive industries (REII) and DHC networks will be able to use and rely on the EMB3Rs platform to investigate the revenue potential of using industrial excess HC as an energy (re)source. The REII will be able to evaluate the benefits of investing in low carbon options, such as the integration of renewable HC technologies and thermal storage, in industrial processes. Ultimately, by translating industrial excess HC into savings, revenues and increased overall system efficiency, EMB3Rs will allow the REII community to improve its competitiveness, foster and accelerate the decarbonisation of the HC market overall and contribute to the EU climate change mitigation goals. Namely by i) contributing to overcome the barriers for developing and deploying in HC solutions, i.e. reaching a critical mass of users, iii) identifying critical framework conditions and success factors and iv) promoting transfer and replication of solutions in other industrial sectors and iv) stimulating the convergence between energy, energy efficiency goals, CO2 reduction and business interests.

FlexGeo aims to develop innovative geothermal energy system designs for maximized systems performance and flexibility. Pathing the way for the market entry of commercial modular reversible ORC systems will be, together with advanced smart control strategies and operational tools, the backbone of our concept. The proposed key-innovations will make geothermal systems more flexible, more efficient, more economically viable and adaptable for an implementation and market update across Europe and beyond. A modular rev. 200 kWel ORC unit with advanced control strategies and operational tool will be installed and demonstrated at a real district heating system at the TUM Campus in Garching, Germany. The first-time demonstration of this innovative technology on a TRL 7 level will directly path the way to its market entry after the project, since due to the attractive modular approach, the demonstrator already has the same capacity as the future commercial product. Furthermore, innovative geothermal system designs considering high- and low-temperature Underground Thermal Energy Storage (UTES) systems, advanced closed-loop systems (AGS) and enhanced flexibility of district heating (DH) and district cooling (DC) networks (DHCN), are pathing the way to a broad spread of the FlexGeo solutions across Europe and the world, resulting in largescale CO2 emission reductions.

The EU 2050 Long-term Strategy develops scenarios for a climate-neutral EU in 2050 that aim at full deployment of low-carbon technologies or assume increased climate awareness of EU citizens translating into lifestyle changes, consumer choices, and a more circular economy. While these scenarios integrate societal trends, further progress is necessary to enhance the empirical basis for such New Societal Trends and their representation in models. New Societal Trends have potentially a large (increasing or decreasing) impact on energy consumption and might lead to cross-sectoral demand shifts that go beyond extrapolation of presently observed trends (continuous trends) and may speed up when they are embraced by larger parts of the society (disruptive trends). Such trends include in particular: digitalisation of the economy and of private lives, Circular Economy and Low-carbon industry, and Shared Economy, which will be the main focus of the present project. The novelty of our project arises from three perspectives: A thematic perspective identifying and quantifying how New Societal Trends affect energy demand, using trend-evolution pathways. A methodological perspective combining qualitative (foresight methods) with quantitative cross-sectoral modelling and exploring how energy demand models are to be improved to represent New Societal Trends. Several well-established models build the core of this project (INVERT/EE-Lab, FORECAST bottom-up model family, PRIMES energy system model, GEM-E3(-FIT)). All of which have been used extensively in the EU context for long-term projections and will be enhanced in this project. Further, policies will be represented in the demand models that influence such trends in the light of the EE1 Principle. Finally, a data perspective enhancing the empirical basis for modelling the impact of new societal trends through exploitation of new data sources (e.g. smart meter data) and empirical data (e.g. on behavioural changes).