Energy independence from RES through innovation procurement

Novel approaches to the energy renovation of buildings are being developed through an international pre-commercial procurement project (PCP) which is addressing the challenges of energy independence, resilience, and climate change mitigation. The project will operationalise a PCP mechanism to develop and validate renovation approaches in which the ‘energy efficiency first’ principle is merged with the EU’s quest for a decentralized supply of energy from renewable sources.

The procuRE project will grant up to €7.68M to qualified researchers and technology suppliers through a challenged-based procurement constituted of 3 co-development and implementation phases.

A new co-design procedure between the buyers’ group and suppliers will facilitate the conceptualisation of technical solutions, prototype testing, and finally, the installment of equipment and management systems across 6 demonstration buildings in Germany, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel. The developed solutions will then undergo operational testing and a comprehensive validation process in the everyday use of the buildings. Together, the buyers’ group operates 21,000 buildings, which represents the project’s potential for the scaling of innovative solutions validated by demonstration sites.

The project offers a unique appropriation of innovation procurement into a multi-stakeholder co-development process in which building operators and users play a central role. Focus groups of different stakeholders (occupants, operators, owners) led to a discussion on various topics including existing deficiencies of buildings, levels of understanding, priorities, and expectations. Special attention was given to the challenge of communicating the real-time performance of the building to the users in a way that would promote awareness about users’ energy consumption.

The building operators are also essential to achieve the highest possible self-sufficiency, thus a strong emphasis on operator training is prevalent in the renovation approaches. Conversely, building owners are encouraged to look past the rudimentary picture portrayed by financial metrics alone and also consider wider benefits (e.g. air quality, thermal comfort, GHG emissions, etc.). The procuRE project will provide an innovative way to renovate the existing building stock while promoting RES adoption within a user-centred approach based on matching supply and demand. With buildings representing 40% of final energy use and about one-third of GHG emissions, whereby 75% of the existing stock today doesn’t comply with efficiency targets, meeting the procuRE challenge is essential to the future of resilient energy supply from renewables, economic growth and success in reaching GHG reduction targets.

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This best practice is issued from our publication “Sustainable Regions in Action 2023”. Find out more by clicking here to discover many more best practices from FEDARENE members as well as an overview of our activities.