Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the EU alone. Therefore, energy efficiency measures of buildings are key to improve building’s energy and environmental performance, taking advantage of the availability of renewable energy but without compromising the comfort of their users. On top of that, especially with the anticipated electrification of heating, cooling and hot tap water production, buildings are one of the most valuable resources for the provision of flexibility at demand-side given their considerable energy consumption levels that also contribute to high emissions of CO2.
In order to fully unlock the potential of buildings towards energy savings, energy costs and CO2 emissions reduction, new smart energy services that aim at exploring flexibility must be identified. Given that many buildings in the EU are over 50 years old and a substantial part of them is energy inefficient, the use of ICT solutions and tools, relying also on big data provided by smart meters and sensors, coupled with the renovation of the existing building stock, will be able to trigger significant savings with reduced investment.
Energy Performance Contracting schemes are an effective means to address this and provide energy efficiency services that can bring added value to the whole chain and contribute to the empowerment of energy end users through dedicated service providers such as ESCOs, aggregators or energy cooperatives that can increase the overall benefits through the grouping of several of these smart energy services.
By exploiting Demand Response actions and combining them with an efficient control of distributed generation, in particular those units based on Renewable Energy Sources, it is possible to increase the integration of energy from “zero-emission” power generation through the management and use of these resources locally. This will avoid potential constraints to the distribution grid.
Advances in different technological fields should enable energy savings and costs reductions by going beyond the passive buildings concept (typically involving measures affecting the building’s envelope, like better insulation and glazing) and adopting an Active Control of buildings approach. This approach uses buildings’ inherent flexibility to further reduce losses or costs and maximise the use of self-generated renewable energy.
The combination of this approach with the current EPC schemes brought us the Active Building EPC (AEPC) which implies the use of intelligent and real-time information that allows for new combined services, agreed performance criteria on comfort and safety and new levels of flexibility.
In the AmBIENCe project the concept of Energy Performance Contracting was extended to Active Buildings and made available and attractive to a wider range of buildings. AmBIENCe provided new concepts and business models for performance guarantees of Active Buildings, combining savings from energy efficiency measures with additional savings and earnings resulting from the active control of assets leveraging for instance price-based incentive contracts. An integrated modular AEPC concept and a proof-of-concept platform were developed that support the creation of Active Building Performance Contracts. The AEPC concept and proof-of-concept platform were validated in two pilot sites and further exploitation opportunities were defined. The anticipated electrification of heating, cooling and hot tap water production, allows buildings to contribute to the provision of flexibility and as such, also within an AEPC project, contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions.
