One of the principal challenges to increasing energy efficiency investments (EEI) is the lack of statistical data on the actual energy and costs savings achieved with them. Data is still hard to access because it is decentralized and in different formats. Consequently, only a small part of this can be used to produce reliable empirical evidence on the performance of the EEI. EN-TRACK will meet this challenge by enabling an interoperable ecosystem of data and tools supporting building refurbishment decision making, putting it into practice with the financial sector. EN-TRACK builds on an existing infrastructure enabling massive data gathering, making the data comparable and interoperable with other existing databases, analysing this data and offering relevant results to key stakeholders. This will support better (more informed, more transparent and faster) decision-making, contribute to the de-risking of investments in energy efficiency in buildings and facilitate process of closing investment deals. Enabling interoperability with most currently active databases and tools (DEEP, eQuad, EnerInvest, etc.) will lead to an unambiguous data exchange based services ecosystem with low transactional costs. This is a big step towards making energy efficiency investments a mainstream activity of the financial sector. EN-TRACK is a three-year project that will directly involve over 35 financial institutions and 100 key stakeholders with a buildings stock investment capacity of over 442M€, trigger over 23M€ in investments and expects to be achieving annual savings of over 38GWh/yr and 17ktCO2eq/yr by the end of the project. EN-TRACK will become self-sustainable and x10 expansion 5 years post-project is anticipated. The EN-TRACK consortium is a team of 7 from 5 EU countries that includes data and analytical skills, buildings access, leading figures in the energy efficiency financing field, links to the key initiatives (DEEP, EEFIG, etc.), and professional communications skills.

BENEFFICE’s strategic objective is to reduce wasted energy by incentivising various consumer types in the wide energy consumer market. A novel ecosystem will be developed which enables and incentivises long-term energy consumption savings. BENEFFICE ecosystem leverages novel IoT enabled, low-cost, “plug-and-play-and-forget” devices, energy disaggregation and an innovative empowerment and rewards approach based on an alternative monetary currency so as to change consumers’ energy consumption behaviour. The “plug-and-play-and-forget” devices will accurately capture energy use patterns at the level of each electrical appliance and at the level of each individual user. An energy behaviour model will be used to correlate these patterns with optimal, personalised comfort levels, social profiles and characteristics (including social, economic, geographic and energy use contexts) in order to determine optimal energy use behaviour to reduce wastage of energy and to increase the use of renewable resources in the energy mix. BENEFICE will design personalized, real-time motivational paths to deliver sustained reductions in energy consumption. Customers will be incentivized to follow these paths voluntarily, through the application of novel business models that provide monetary rewards in return for progress along each personalized pathway and help build an online community of like-minded actors. These business models will be based on an innovative digital CO2 currency - CO2 Credits are awarded to actors for proven, sustained reduction in fossil fuel use. Business models that stimulate the supply of, and demand for, CO2 Credits, will be designed, tested and validated. These business models will leverage partnerships with established businesses -third party market catalysts- that recognize the potential offered by CO2 Credits both to promote reduced consumption of fossil fuels and to extend their market share by offering a new service to their clients with clear social added value.

Efficient, reliable and sustainable delivery of energy is critical to the health and welfare of all people. Providing a low-carbon, climate resilient energy supply is a global challenge, which is even more demanding in remote areas. With increasing penetration of renewable energy resources (RES), and high expectations from end-users for energy reliability, connectivity and utilisation of available energy resources needs reconsideration. Thus, technologically smart and economically viable solutions for extending the lifetime of energy infrastructure will be in high demand. Incorporating more distributed RES and storage assets at the edges of the electricity grid, and optimally balancing these assets with other energy vectors, while extending the lifetime of current infrastructures will not only be economically viable, but at the same time decrease the level of carbonisation in local energy systems. E-LAND consortium believes that there are still major challenges in connection to technology, society and economics to overcome. In the E-LAND project, the main objective is to tackle these challenges and support the decarbonisation of energy islands by developing a E-LAND Toolbox for Multi-Energy Islands including tools and methods addressing the business, society and technology challenges. Project is going to implement the toolbox and demonstrate the viability and impact of the tools and methods created in 3 real life pilots in Europe and through simulations with 2 cases in India. Pilots have different geography, demography, sociography and maturity in terms of community and end-user activities, implementation of different energy vectors including storage, amount of renewables in the local energy mix and variety of loads that call for efficient and intelligent management system. To further expand the exploitation of E-LAND results, the Toolbox will be modular and the consortium will develop replication guidelines for utilising the tools in replication sites.

The Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) model has been successful in attracting investments in energy efficiency, but mainly for single, large projects. Energy efficiency programs, on the other hand, constitute an alternative path to scaling up the number of buildings that implement energy efficiency interventions, but the practice of rebates and incentives that are paid up front creates a need to rely on deemed energy savings and on complex and costly regulations that hinder innovation. SENSEI will propose a solution to this deadlock. Building on earlier successful experimentation outside of the EU, we will design concepts and business models that will help: (a) generate new sources of benefits that increase the value of an energy retrofit project by enabling the compensation of energy efficiency as an energy resource, and (b) turn the project’s value into an investable asset to attract private financing. The main concept underlying the SENSEI business models is pay-for-performance (P4P), which offers an effective way to engage both energy providers and third-party investorsin energy efficiency. SENSEI will first elaborate P4P schemes for financing energy efficiency that can be implemented across the EU, and then integrate these P4P schemes with the preparation and implementation stages of the EPC model, with the intention of increasing and/or financing the gains in a building’s value that are produced by energy efficiency improvements. The developed concepts will utilize actual building data and the consortium’s competences to carry out a series of negotiation games among all SENSEI parties – representing all links in the EPC and P4P chain. The project has planned a series of activities to both disseminate the insights from these games and to support stakeholders in using our recommendations with the goal of rolling out the first P4P pilots in the EU.

Penetration of renewables is a no-regrets option for energy system decarbonization. Despite their benefits for the energy system, the grid integration of variable RES presents major challenges in matching their non-deterministic output to electricity demand. Resolving this necessitates the deployment and penetration of several solutions, a key on being demand response, which in turn depends on the role of prosumers with regards to their engagement with the energy system. Demand flexibility from residential buildings is the main untapped source of flexibility currently in the market and promises significant flexibility potential, especially taking into account the electrification of heat and transport mega-trends. Energy communities are a promising organizational vehicle for involving citizens – who directly control residential demand - in the energy transition, but currently lack the necessary tools to exploit the available opportunities and create financially viable operations based on the provision of services that citizens want. ACCEPT aims to fill this gap by delivering a digital toolbox that energy communities can use to: i) offer innovative and desired digital services, complementing their existing non-digital services to their members and customers, and ii) gain access to revenue streams that can financially support their operations and ensure longevity and well-functioning of the community itself. To achieve this, the ACCEPT consortium is framing the citizen engagement and business modelling activities in the same priority as the technical development ones. Their intertwined implementation will be the critical success factor for the delivery of the ACCEPT solution as a Minimum Viable Product that has already passed preliminary market testing and financial viability checks. The ACCEPT outcomes will be demonstrated and validated in four pilot sites in the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Greece, directly involving more than 750 residences and 3000 citizens.