Call: Advanced energy performance assessment and certification

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Programme

Horizon Europe - Cluster 5 - Destination 4: Efficient, sustainable and inclusive energy use

Acronym

HE-CL5-D4

Type of Fund

Direct Management

Description of programme
"Horizon Europe - Cluster 5 - Destination 4: Efficient, sustainable and inclusive energy use"

This Destination addresses activities targeting the energy demand side, notably a more efficient use of energy as regards buildings and industry.

Demand side solutions and improved energy efficiency are among the most cost effective ways to support the transition to climate neutrality, reduce pollution and raw materials use, to create inclusive growth and employment in Europe, to bring down costs for consumers, to reduce our import dependency and redirect investments towards smart and sustainable infrastructure. The transition to a decentralised and climate neutral energy system will greatly benefit from the use of digital technologies which will enable buildings and industrial facilities to become inter-active elements in the energy system by optimising energy consumption, distributed generation and storage and vis-à-vis the energy system. They will also trigger new business opportunities and revenue streams for up-graded, innovative energy services which valorise energy savings and flexible consumption.

This Destination contributes to the following Strategic Plan’s Key Strategic Orientations (KSO):

C: Making Europe the first digitally enabled circular, climate-neutral and sustainable economy through the transformation of its mobility, energy, construction and production systems;
A: Promoting an open strategic autonomy[[‘Open strategic autonomy’ refers to the term ‘strategic autonomy while preserving an open economy’, as reflected in the conclusions of the European Council 1 – 2 October 2020.]] by leading the development of key digital, enabling and emerging technologies, sectors and value chains to accelerate and steer the digital and green transitions through human-centred technologies and innovations.

It covers the following impact areas:

Industrial leadership in key and emerging technologies that work for people;
Affordable and clean energy;
Circular and clean economy.

The expected impact, in line with the Strategic Plan, is to contribute to the “Efficient and sustainable use of energy, accessible for all is ensured through a clean energy system and a just transition”, notably through

Technological and socio-economic breakthroughs for achieving climate neutrality and the transition to zero pollution of the building stock by 2050, based on inclusive and people-centric R&I (more detailed information below).
Increased energy efficiency in industry and reducing industry’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) and air pollutant emissions through recovery, upgrade and/or conversion of industrial excess (waste) heat and through electrification of heat generation (more information below).

Other Horizon Europe Clusters include topics and activities that can be relevant to this Destination, e.g. in order to seek synergies. These include (but are not limited to) the following:

Cluster 2:

Destination 2 – Innovative Research on the European Cultural Heritage and the Cultural and Creative Industries. That Destination is most relevant for the topics which scope addresses heritage buildings.
Destination 3 - Innovative Research on Social and Economic Transformations. That Destination is most relevant for the social innovation items included in some of the topics.

Cluster 3:

Destination 4 – Increased Cybersecurity. This potential link is most relevant for the topics that address smart buildings and digitalisation of buildings.
Destination 5 – A Disaster-Resilient Society for Europe. This potential link can be relevant for the topics that address the resilience of the building stock.

Cluster 4: the whole cluster is relevant, in particular Destination 1 – Climate Neutral, circular and digitised production, which is highly relevant for all topics on buildings (e.g. for the digitalisation of construction / renovation workflows).

Cluster 6:

Destination 3 – Circular economy and bioeconomy sectors and Destination 4 – Clean environment and zero pollution. This potential link is relevant for all topics, in particular those that address sustainable renovation of buildings.

Beyond Horizon Europe, other programmes include some components with which synergies and complementarities can be found. For instance, the Clean Energy Transition and Circular Economy sub-programmes under LIFE can contribute to the market uptake of the innovation delivered under this Destination. The Digital Europe programme includes actions that can be relevant to consider in relation to the topics that entail the development or use of (big) data approaches.

Highly energy-efficient and climate neutral European building stock

Topics under this Destination targeting highly energy-efficient and climate-neutral European building stock focus on both, the energy challenge in buildings and, more broadly, the transformation of the built environment towards more sustainable living.

In line with the new European Bauhaus aiming to “bring the European Green Deal to life in an attractive, and innovative and human-centred way”, the sustainable built environment should go beyond merely improving the energy and resource efficiency of buildings and also include a qualitative, aesthetic and human dimension. At the intersection of science, technology and the arts, new creative design and architectural solutions should be developed to ensure the sustainable renovation of the existing European building stock for the well-being of its users. In particular the renovation or adaptive reuse of historical and heritage buildings and sites needs to embrace quality principles to safeguard the cultural values of Europe’s historical environment and local architectural identity.

Topics targeting energy efficiency in buildings under this Destination seek to achieve the following impacts:

More energy efficient building stocks supported by an accurate understanding of buildings performance in Europe and of related evolutions.
Building stocks that effectively combine energy efficiency, renewable energy sources and digital and smart technologies to support the transformation of the energy system towards climate neutrality.

Addressing the broader transformation of the built environment, though, requires a larger involvement of all players across the built environment value chain and throughout building life cycle. To this end, a co-programmed European Partnership on a people-centric, sustainable built environment has been set up (Built4People) to develop holistic R&I for an effective transition to sustainability. All Horizon Europe R&I actions addressing the challenges related to the buildings and construction sector will contribute to achieving the Built4People Partnership goals and will benefit from the coordinated approach within the community of its partners and stakeholders. Topics contributing to the implementation of the Built4People European Partnership seek to achieve the following impacts:

Higher buildings’ performance with lower environmental impacts through increased rates of holistic renovations.
Higher quality, more affordable built environment preserving climate and environment, and safeguarding cultural heritage and ensuring better living conditions.

Industrial facilities in the energy transition

Topics on industrial facilities in the energy transition supported under this Destination focus on thermal energy management in industry. The bulk of R&I activities related to industry is however supported under Cluster 4 “Digital, Industry and Space”.

Link

Link to Programme

Call

Advanced energy performance assessment and certification

Description of call
"Advanced energy performance assessment and certification"

Expected Outcome

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

Improved construction quality and service life compliance.
Improved accuracy of energy performance assessment and any other assessment conducted in parallel, reduced gap between assessment and actual performance.
Improved and automated monitoring of energy performance of buildings, and other relevant life-cycle performance aspects with a direct link to the energy efficiency performance.
Improved user-friendliness of Energy Performance Certificates and post-occupancy performance data, in terms of clarity, accuracy, trade-offs and usability of the information provided.
Increased uptake of design standards and practices based on actual performance.
More reliable understanding of energy and environmental performance in the early stage of the building life cycle, and over service life, based on robust and consistent assessment practices across the buildings sector and across Member States and Associated Countries.

Scope

The next generation of energy performance assessment and certification schemes needs to support the transition towards a climate neutral building stock over the full life cycle, relying on technological innovations to improve speed and quality of as-built performance assessment and service life compliance checks, also linking to other instruments such as building logbooks, building renovation roadmaps, Level(s) and other datasets. Energy performance assessment and certification schemes should seek to work coherently, where relevant, with other performance data generated over the building’s life cycle. This can include well-being, indoor air quality, noise and acoustic quality, daylight levels, pollutants and health related data, as well as data pertaining to other issues such as accessibility of buildings, and consumption of non-energy resources such as water.

The proposal should:

Develop more reliable, cost-effective and highly replicable energy performance calculation methods also addressing, in parallel, relevant life-cycle performance aspects (e.g. well-being, indoor air quality and comfort, acoustics, water consumption, resilience, or whole life carbon) with a direct link to the energy efficiency performance.
Address the definition and demonstration of advanced and innovative approaches for building energy performance and certification, and how these can interact with other relevant life cycle performance data and certification, focusing on a credible assessment of building intrinsic performance but also increasingly working towards output-based assessments using available building data; Investigate how such approaches can rely on automatic and semi-automatic assessment based on building digital models (e.g. BIM).
Seek to incorporate in those approaches social and economic indicators.
Develop dynamic energy and other relevant life-cycle performance assessment and certification databases as a unique source of information on individual buildings over their lifetime for home owners, investors, real estate agents and public authorities.
Demonstrate how data from smart sensors can be included in assessments in a dynamic way, also exploring, where relevant, how to combine building asset rating with building operational rating, and how to use digital innovations for the assessment of energy and other relevant life-cycle performance.
Ensure the proposed solutions build on the results of previous projects dealing with building performance including Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), also considering where relevant integrating building renovation passports or roadmaps in EPCs.
Ensure the proposed solutions allow for synergies with other relevant instruments (e.g. the smart readiness indicator under Directive 2010/31/EU, building renovation passports and relevant parts of Level(s)).
Seek to ensure from the design phase that the project is developed with a view to integrate its results/deliverables under a digital building logbook.
Ensure that the proposed solutions comply with, and support a broad adoption of, relevant EU standards (e.g. Energy Performance of Buildings standards developed by CEN, CENELEC and ETSI under Mandate M/480) and codes in order to allow for an EU-wide deployment.
Ensure the involvement of relevant stakeholders (including European, national and regional certification bodies and consumer organisations).

Clustering and cooperation with other relevant projects is strongly encouraged; in particular, liaison and synergies with the Horizon Europe Partnership on ‘People-centric sustainable built environment’.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a clear business case and exploitation strategy, as well as demonstration activities (at least three demonstration use cases) of an adequate scale.

This topic requires the effective contribution of SSH disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities.

Cross-cutting Priorities:

Link

Link to Call

Thematic Focus

Research & Innovation, Technology Transfer & Exchange, Climate, Climate Change, Environment & Biodiversity, Clustering, Development Cooperation, Economic Cooperation, Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, Green Technologies & Green Deal, Administration & Governance, Digitisation, ICT, Telecommunication, Capacity Building, Cooperation Networks, Institutional Cooperation

Funding area

EU Member States
Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs)

Origin of Applicant

EU Member States
Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs)

Eligible applicants

Federal State / Region / City / Municipality / Local Authority, Public Services, National Government, Education and Training Centres, Lobby Group / Professional Association / Trade Union, International Organization, Research Institution, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, SMEs (between 10 and 249 employees), Microenterprises (fewer than 10 employees), NGO / NPO, Start Up Company, Other, University, Enterprise (more than 250 employees or not defined), Association

Applicant details

eligible non-EU countries:

countries associated to Horizon Europe

At the date of the publication of the work programme, there are no countries associated to Horizon Europe. Considering the Union’s interest to retain, in principle, relations with the countries associated to Horizon 2020, most third countries associated to Horizon 2020 are expected to be associated to Horizon Europe with an intention to secure uninterrupted continuity between Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe. In addition, other third countries can also become associated to Horizon Europe during the programme. For the purposes of the eligibility conditions, applicants established in Horizon 2020 Associated Countries or in other third countries negotiating association to Horizon Europe will be treated as entities established in an Associated Country, if the Horizon Europe association agreement with the third country concerned applies at the time of signature of the grant agreement.

low-and middle-income countries

Legal entities which are established in countries not listed above will be eligible for funding if provided for in the specific call conditions, or if their participation is considered essential for implementing the action by the granting authority.

Specific cases:

Affiliated entities - Affiliated entities are eligible for funding if they are established in one of the countries listed above.
EU bodies - Legal entities created under EU law may also be eligible to receive funding, unless their basic act states otherwise.
International organisations - International European research organisations are eligible to receive funding. Unless their participation is considered essential for implementing the action by the granting authority, other international organisations are not eligible to receive funding. International organisations with headquarters in a Member State or Associated Country are eligible to receive funding for ‘Training and mobility’actions and when provided for in the specific call conditions.

Project Partner

Yes

Project Partner Details

Unless otherwise provided for in the specific call conditions , legal entities forming a consortium are eligible to participate in actions provided that the consortium includes:

at least one independent legal entity established in a Member State;and
at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries.

Further info

Proposal page limits and layout:

The application form will have two parts:

Part A to be filled in directly online (administrative information, summarised budget, call-specific questions, etc.)
Part B to be downloaded from the Portal submission system, completed and re-uploaded as a PDF in the system

Page limit - Part B: 70 pages

Type of Funding

Grants

Financial details

Expected EU contribution per project	The Commission estimates that an EU contribution of between EUR 3.00 and 5.00 million would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of a proposal requesting different amounts.
Indicative budget	The total indicative budget for the topic is EUR 10.00 million.
Typ of Action	Innovation Actions (IA)
Funding rate	70%

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 6-7 by the end of the project.

Submission

Proposals must be submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Portal Electronic Submission System. Paper submissions are NOTpossible.