The construction industry is an important industrial sector in the EU economy, providing 18 million direct jobs and contributing to approximately 10% of the EU's GDP. In addition to jobs and economic health, the buildings and construction industries also is part of the social, climate and energy challenges faced by Europe, with buildings using 40% of total EU energy consumption and generating 36% of greenhouse gases in Europe. The goal of the European Commission is to help the sector become more competitive, resource efficient and sustainable and the construction sector is today on a critical path to help decarbonise the European economy by 2050. Novel breakthrough innovations (materials, components, and system-level solutions) need to be implemented across Europe at both the building level and the district level in order for the investment in research and development to bear fruition, paving the road towards a more sustainable and robust construction sector. However, economic and social benefits from investments in advanced material research are not yet so apparent, as it would have been expected.
AMANAC successfully identified and addressed the main bottlenecks that slow down the impact and market penetration of New and Advanced Materials for energy efficiency in buildings. Market adoption of the novel technologies and solutions developed within the AMANAC projects face a number of barriers but finding early adopters and market channels that will leverage the total lifecycle costs rather than focusing on up-front costs is a common theme for all projects, no matter what the underpinning technology innovation. In addition to lifecycle cost benefits, regulatory needs and standards/certifications can provide both a barrier but also an opportunity if it is possible to leverage the testing undertaken during the project. IPR issues and upscaling & manufacturing readiness at the end of typical projects, especially FP7 projects, was highlighted as a common challenge which can prevent taking the positive project results to the market.
AMANAC created a new communication paradigm among projects with common research goals. This new spirit of collaboration and sharing has the potential to impact and improve the level of EU research in Advanced Materials for EeB. The 29 participating projects were categorized in 6 thematic areas and each thematic area identified clustering needs and priorities and developed an Action Plan that included proposed implementation actions, responsible partners for the follow up and coordination of the planned activities, time schedule. Thematic area leaflets and poster were developed that were updated to include the latest project results. This horizontal cooperation between the participating projects managed to monitor progress in each project and to raise awareness on the foreground generated by project in different thematic areas leading to possible synergies between partners or future cooperation. The wiki and the product gallery created a first time opportunity for experts to exchange practical, reliable and up-to-date technical information emerging from relevant FP7 and H2020 projects. It gave access to more than 3,000 visitors and directly increased the visibility of AMANAC project scientific and technical developments.
