Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EN-TRACK (Energy Efficiency Performance-Tracking Platform for Benchmarking Savings and Investments in Buildings)
Período documentado: 2020-11-01 hasta 2022-04-30
One of the principal challenges to increasing energy efficiency investments in buildings is the lack of statistical data on the actual energy and costs savings achieved with them. Recent technology, market and policy drivers are resulting in a rapid increase in the generation of building and energy related data, including data on retrofit and operational and maintenance (O&M) costs. However, this data is still hard to access, aggregate, share and utilise because it is being housed in many decentralised databases, and in different formats. Consequently, only a small part of this information is gainfully employed to better inform decision-makers and investors. The potential for providing more reliable empirical evidence on the performance of the potential investments based on analysis, comparisons and benchmarking of this data is huge but there is a puzzle to be solved for this potential to be realised.
The creation of “operational” databases supporting portfolio benchmarking analysis, built on increasing amounts of data provision, from smart-metering and other sources, has been a request from many financial institutions and industry stakeholders. This has been addressed recently, to some extent, by some tools and databases developed in Europe. However, due to lack of comparability and interoperability with other tools, it is difficult to achieve sufficient critical mass of data and users for successful commercial uptake of these tools. Achieving this comparability is interoperability is one of the puzzle pieces.
In parallel, large building portfolio owners such as Public Authorities and other large building owners, are responsible for a significant part of Europe’s building stock and already have the necessary energy and financial information to evaluate the energy efficiency investments’ performance in their buildings. However, this information is dispersed and managed in separate departments (O&M, Accounts, etc.) or external providers and data gathering is difficult. Facilitating the coordination, organisation and structuring of data collection, access, and use is another piece of the puzzle.
According to official sources, buildings in the EU are responsible for 40% of our energy consumption and roughly 75% of the EU building stock is energy inefficient. Renovation of buildings to improve energy efficiency is given a prominent role in the European Green Deal, as it can produce enormous social impact by reducing emissions, diminishing dependence on fossil fuels, and tackling poverty. However, huge amount of investment needs to be mobilised in order to fulfil this prominent role. This is yet another puzzle piece.
EN-TRACK will contribute to overcoming the above challenges by both contributing to solving each individual puzzle and working to ensure that all of the pieces fit together to reveal the bigger picture: making financing of energy retrofitting in buildings a mainstream activity in the financial sector. The overall aim of the project is to enable an interoperable ecosystem of data and tools in the area of building energy efficiency supporting the technical and financial decision making in refurbishment of the existing building stock and to prove its utility by putting it into practice, gaining traction with the financial sector and really making it into a mainstream activity. This will be achieved by:
• Providing an open-source big data platform capable to acquire and harmonise data from multiple sources on the base of internal standardised description of building data and energy efficiency measures.
• Attracting large public building owners (governmental, regional, municipal) in continuous collection and sharing of building data by offering them robust benchmarking of buildings’ and efficiency investments’ performance and other services.
• Enabling interoperability with most currently active databases and tools in Europe (DEEP, eQuad, etc.) and moving toward compliance with the BEDES (Building Energy Data Exchange Specification) ecosystem of interoperable tools in the USA.
The creation of “operational” databases supporting portfolio benchmarking analysis, built on increasing amounts of data provision, from smart-metering and other sources, has been a request from many financial institutions and industry stakeholders. This has been addressed recently, to some extent, by some tools and databases developed in Europe. However, due to lack of comparability and interoperability with other tools, it is difficult to achieve sufficient critical mass of data and users for successful commercial uptake of these tools. Achieving this comparability is interoperability is one of the puzzle pieces.
In parallel, large building portfolio owners such as Public Authorities and other large building owners, are responsible for a significant part of Europe’s building stock and already have the necessary energy and financial information to evaluate the energy efficiency investments’ performance in their buildings. However, this information is dispersed and managed in separate departments (O&M, Accounts, etc.) or external providers and data gathering is difficult. Facilitating the coordination, organisation and structuring of data collection, access, and use is another piece of the puzzle.
According to official sources, buildings in the EU are responsible for 40% of our energy consumption and roughly 75% of the EU building stock is energy inefficient. Renovation of buildings to improve energy efficiency is given a prominent role in the European Green Deal, as it can produce enormous social impact by reducing emissions, diminishing dependence on fossil fuels, and tackling poverty. However, huge amount of investment needs to be mobilised in order to fulfil this prominent role. This is yet another puzzle piece.
EN-TRACK will contribute to overcoming the above challenges by both contributing to solving each individual puzzle and working to ensure that all of the pieces fit together to reveal the bigger picture: making financing of energy retrofitting in buildings a mainstream activity in the financial sector. The overall aim of the project is to enable an interoperable ecosystem of data and tools in the area of building energy efficiency supporting the technical and financial decision making in refurbishment of the existing building stock and to prove its utility by putting it into practice, gaining traction with the financial sector and really making it into a mainstream activity. This will be achieved by:
• Providing an open-source big data platform capable to acquire and harmonise data from multiple sources on the base of internal standardised description of building data and energy efficiency measures.
• Attracting large public building owners (governmental, regional, municipal) in continuous collection and sharing of building data by offering them robust benchmarking of buildings’ and efficiency investments’ performance and other services.
• Enabling interoperability with most currently active databases and tools in Europe (DEEP, eQuad, etc.) and moving toward compliance with the BEDES (Building Energy Data Exchange Specification) ecosystem of interoperable tools in the USA.
The work is progressing very well, with all due deliverables for the period submitted on time. All major objectives of the project have been achieved to the extent of the planned within the scope of the reporting period. The progress in all expected impacts is fully on-track.
There are no significant deviations from plan either in time, resource use, or achievement of milestones and results.
Significant results have already been achieved.
a. Technical highlights
• The overall platform architecture has been implemented and tested;
• The EN-TRACK common data model (aligned to DEEP and BEDES) has been developed, implemented, and tested with initial upload and harmonisation of data from tens of different data sources;
• The EN-TRACK services and Graphic User Interfaces have been defined and are under implementation, in line with the planning.
b. Exploitation/dissemination highlights
• Integrated services with third-party platforms defined and data exchange fields mapped (DEEP, eQuad, BEDES);
• Presentation in >10 events (~3000 stakeholders), 2 peer-review papers published, >200 financial institutions and >250 building owner stakeholder contacts reached.
• Public deliverables published on open repository Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/communities/h2020-en-track/
c. Collaborative highlight
• Collaboration with group of 10 sister projects in sharing information;
• Joint workshop with the Triple-A project organised;
• Active collaboration with DEEP, LBNL, and EEFIG members through the advisory board.
There are no significant deviations from plan either in time, resource use, or achievement of milestones and results.
Significant results have already been achieved.
a. Technical highlights
• The overall platform architecture has been implemented and tested;
• The EN-TRACK common data model (aligned to DEEP and BEDES) has been developed, implemented, and tested with initial upload and harmonisation of data from tens of different data sources;
• The EN-TRACK services and Graphic User Interfaces have been defined and are under implementation, in line with the planning.
b. Exploitation/dissemination highlights
• Integrated services with third-party platforms defined and data exchange fields mapped (DEEP, eQuad, BEDES);
• Presentation in >10 events (~3000 stakeholders), 2 peer-review papers published, >200 financial institutions and >250 building owner stakeholder contacts reached.
• Public deliverables published on open repository Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/communities/h2020-en-track/
c. Collaborative highlight
• Collaboration with group of 10 sister projects in sharing information;
• Joint workshop with the Triple-A project organised;
• Active collaboration with DEEP, LBNL, and EEFIG members through the advisory board.
Significant progress beyond the state of the art has been achieved in:
• Common and standards-based data model for storing information on the performance of energy efficiency investments in buildings
• Definition of indicators for tracking and benchmarking of investments’ performance covering energy, cost, and emissions aspects.
• Interoperability with a variety of data sources and third-party platforms.
Expected results for the next period:
• EN-TRACK service launch at pilot scale planned for October 2022;
• Interoperability and joint services with DEEP and eQuad towards end of 2022;
• Business models for sustainability of the services beyond the project to come in early 2023;
• Agreements and MoU to be signed and energy efficiency investment data collected, leveraging on the large pool of contacts established.
• Gather data on the performance of approximately 1150 projects including about 4500 energy efficiency measures.
• Common and standards-based data model for storing information on the performance of energy efficiency investments in buildings
• Definition of indicators for tracking and benchmarking of investments’ performance covering energy, cost, and emissions aspects.
• Interoperability with a variety of data sources and third-party platforms.
Expected results for the next period:
• EN-TRACK service launch at pilot scale planned for October 2022;
• Interoperability and joint services with DEEP and eQuad towards end of 2022;
• Business models for sustainability of the services beyond the project to come in early 2023;
• Agreements and MoU to be signed and energy efficiency investment data collected, leveraging on the large pool of contacts established.
• Gather data on the performance of approximately 1150 projects including about 4500 energy efficiency measures.