Major investment on sustainable renovation for smarter cities The 30 million Euro project “EU-GUGLE” was launched earlier this month, paving the way to the sustainable renovation of around 226.000m² of living space in six European cities. During the five years of the project, the municipalities aim to achieve 40-80% primary energy savings per pilot district while increasing the share of renewable energy sources by 25%. “Whether we can meet the EU’s objectives of 20% energy savings by 2020 or not will largely depend on our ability to reduce energy consumption in cities”, said project coordinator Florencio Manteca Gonzáles, Director of the Energy in Buildings Department of Spain’s National Renewable Energy Centre (CENER). “With the EU-GUGLE project, we want to show how the smart renovation of groups of buildings at district level can achieve this and, more importantly, how our solutions can be adapted to the needs of other cities Europe-wide”, he continued. Beyond the technological showcase, the EU-GUGLE project sets out to prove that smart renovation strategies can be cost-effective and improve citizens’ quality of life while leading to significant energy savings in urban areas. Pilot cities include Vienna (AT), Aachen (DE), Tampere (FI), Milano (IT), Bratislava (SK), and Sestao (ES). Gothenburg (SE) and Gaziantep (TR) will also take part in the project as associated cities and will be expected to start smart renovation activities during the 5-year project. EU-GUGLE is a project launched in the framework of the Smart Cities and Communities Initiative of the European Commission, and has received over 16 million Euro of EC funding. Countries Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, United Kingdom
