final report_euro green cities net

EEuurrooppeeaann GGrreeeenn CCiittiieess NNeettwwoorrkk ((EEGGCCNN)) Contract no. NNE5-2000-405 with amendment no. 1 (NNE5-2001-608)

Final Technical Report

Prepared by Project Coordinator, Green City Denmark A/S August 2005

European Green Cities Network August 2005 2/107

List of Contents

Page

1. Summary introduction to EGCN and main project events 4

2. Project partners 5

3. Project aim and general description 6

3.1 Project background ……………………………………………………………………… 6

3.2 Project objective ………………………………………………………………………… 7

3.3 Project work content …………………………………………………………………….. 7

3.4 WP 1: Network Secretariat and dissemination ………………………………………… 7

3.5 WP 2: Sustainable Urban Housing Conferences ...…………………………………….... 9

3.6 WP 3: Green Build monitoring tool development ………………………………………. 10

3.7 WP 4: Training model development ……………………………………………………. 10

4. Project work performance

4.1 Steering Committee and Project Management ………………………………………….. 12

4.2 Organising of project groups ……………………………………………………………. 12

4.3 EGCN network members and national experts …………………………………………. 13

4.4 Work package deliverables and milestones ……………………………………………... 13

4.5 Time schedule …………………………………………………………………………… 20

5. Results WP1 Network secretariat and dissemination

5.1 EGCN network secretariat ………………………………………………………………. 22

5.2 EGCN website dissemination …………………………………………………………… 22

5.3 EGCN partners’ national dissemination ………………………………………………… 24

6. Results WP2 Sustainable Urban Housing conferences

6.1 Conference no 1 on solar technologies etc. in Belgium ………………………………… 31

6.2 Conference no 2 on efficient ventilation etc. in Italy …………………………………… 32

6.3 Conference no 3 on energy savings etc. in Hungary ……………………………………. 34

6.4 Conference no 4 on district heating etc. in Austria ……………………………………... 36

6.5 Conference no 5 on biomass etc. in Czech Republic …………………………………… 39

6.6 Short evaluation of main conference results ……………………………………………. 41

7. Results WP3 Green Build monitoring tool development

7.1 Developing financial tools ………………………………………………………………. 42

7.2 Developing building oriented monitoring tools ………………………………………… 43


Page

7.3 Developing urban area oriented monitoring tools ………………………………………. 44

7.4 Testing urban area monitoring tools …………………………………………………….. 46

7.5 Final model for EGCN Green Build Urban Area Monitoring Tool …………………….. 53

7.6 Energy balance calculations …………………………………………………………….. 54

7.7 Scanning audit for urban area …………………………………………………………… 54

7.8 Short evaluation of main Green Build monitoring tools results ………………………… 55

8. Results WP4 Training model development

8.1 EGCN basic training model …………………………………………………………….. 57

8.2 Drafted common training model ………………………………………………………... 57

8.3 Training no1 in Belgium ………………………………………………………………... 60

8.4 Training no 2 in Austria ………………………………………………………………… 61

8.5 Training no 3 in Greece …………………………………………………………………. 63

8.6 Training no 4 in Italy ……………………………………………………………………. 66

8.7 Training no 5 in Lithuania ………………………………………………………………. 69

8.8 Training no 6 in Poland …………………………………………………………………. 72

8.9 Training no 7 in Czech Republic ………………………………………………………... 76

8.10 Training no 8 in Hungary ……………………………………………………………… 77

8.11 Final model for EGCN Training on Sustainable Urban Housing Energy ……………... 79

9. Results WP1-WP2-WP3-WP4 Technology & Market development

9.1 Building integrated solar and efficient use of glazing …………………………………... 9.1.1 Use of solar energy / building integrated solar systems …………………………… 9.1.2 Efficient use of glazing ……………………………………………………………..

838489

9.2 Energy efficient ventilation and emission free building materials ……………………… 9.2.1 Efficient ventilation ………………………………………………………………... 9.2.2 Emission free / natural building materials ………………………………………….

929396

9.3 Renewable energy sources for building energy supply heating/cooling ………………... 9.3.1 Energy supply systems for heating ………………………………………………… 9.3.2 Renewable energy sources from biomass ………………………………………….

9899

10210. Lessons learned

10.1 Problems, solutions and successes …………………………………………………….. 106

10.2 Project modifications …………………………………………………………………... 107

10.3 Project perspectives ……………………………………………………………………. 107

10.4 Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………………. 107


Summary introduction to EGCN and main project events The objectives of the EGCN project are to speed up cross-national awareness and market develop-ment for sustainable urban housing technologies and strengthen innovation towards the increasingly more complex environmental challenges in the field of low-energy and environmental sustainable housing technologies. To reach the objectives, the project has been divided into four main work packages: WP1: Network secretariat and dissemination including project website WP2: Sustainable Urban Housing – 3 RTD Project Groups and 5 matching European conferences WP3: Green Build Monitoring Tools development WP4: Training model development – and 8 matching training courses Periodic report 1 describes the first project period from July 2001 till December 2001 – in which the project secretariat was established, the preliminary establishment of the three RTD project groups as well as establishment of the Green Build and the Training project groups. Furthermore project work started up for the secretariat and all five groups. Periodic report 2 describes the second project period from January 2002 till June 2002 – in which the main project achievement was the launching of the project website: www.europeangreencities.com . The web site is a main tool for the project secretariat. Another major effort was information about supporting the EC 6th Framework Programme. Periodic report 3 describes the third project period from July 2002 till December 2002 – in which the main project event was to carry out successfully the first EGCN conference in Westerloo, Bel-gium, on 1-2 October 2002, and also the first training course on 3-4 October in Westerloo. Periodic report 4 describes the fourth project period from January 2003 till June 2003 – in which period a main project achievement was the welcoming and starting-up cooperation with our 4 new EGCN NAS partners from Lithuania, Poland, Hungaria and Czech Republic. Periodic report 5 describes the fifth reporting period from July 2003 till December 2003, where a main project achievement was carrying out the second EGCN conference in Torino, Italy, which attracted some 140 participants being highly interested in several of the main technology issues within energy efficient ventilation and healthy building materials. Periodic report 6 describes the sixth reporting period from January 2004 till June 2004, where a main result has been carrying out the first conference amongst our Eastern European partners that joined the EGCN project by a contract amendment from February 2003. The conference was carried through in Budapest, Hungary, in a close cooperation with Budapest Technical University. Periodic report 7 describes the 7th reporting period from July till December 2004, where a main event was carrying out the 4th EGCN conference, which was located in Salzburg, Austria. The con-ference attracted some 90 participants – and the main theme of building energy supply resulted into a “break-through” for new district heating approaches to low-energy housing. In last project period from January till June 2005 a main event was the 5th EGCN conference in Decin, Czech Republic, which focused on biomass plants and providing of biomass production.


2. Project partners

The European Green Cities Network consortium consists of the following partners:

Green City Denmark A/S Project co-ordinator Gl. Kongevej 1 DK-1610 Copenhagen Denmark Phone: +45 - 33268989 Fax: +45 - 33268980 www.greencity.dk e-mail: [email protected]

CENERGIA Energy Consultants Sct. Jacobs Vej 4 DK-2750 Ballerup Denmark Phone: +45 - 44660099 Fax: +45 - 44660136 www.cenergia.dk e-mail: [email protected]

Metec&Saggese Engineering Srl Corso Re Umberto, 37 I-10128 Torino Italy Phone: +39 - 011538617 Fax: +39 - 011542481 www.metecsaggese.com e-mail: [email protected]

Municipal Enterprise for Urban Studies Construction and Development (DE-MEKAV) Lahana 5 - Limnou GR-38334 Volos Greece Phone: +30 242 10 28 251 Fax: +30 242 10 28 255 www.demekav.gr e-mail: rect@volos-m-gr

SIR - Salzburger Institut für Raumord-nung & Wohnen Alpenstraße 47 A-5033 Salzburg Austria Phone: +43 - 662623455 Fax: +43 - 662629915 www.sir.at e-mail: [email protected]

Zonnige Kempen Grote Markt 39 B-2260 Westerlo Belgium Phone: +32 - 14541941 Fax: +32 - 14541951 e-mail: [email protected]

National Energy Conservation Agency (NECA) ul. Filtrowa 1 PL-00-611 Warszawa Poland Phone: +48-22 825 5285 Fax: +48-22 825 86 70 www.nape.pl e-mail: [email protected]

Ventos - Ing. Petr Hanek Tovární 205 CZ-408 01 Rumburk Czech Republic Phone: +420-412 354 610 to 613 Fax: +420- 412 332 219 www.ventos.cz e-mail: [email protected]

EMI Non-profit Company for Quality Control and Innovation in Building Diószegi út 37 H-1518 Budapest Hungary Phone: +36 - 1 37 26 146 Fax: +36 - 1 37 26 132 www.emi.hu e-mail: [email protected]

UAB Namu Prieziuros Centras (NPC) Z. Liauksmino Str. 8/3 LT-2001 Vilnius Lithuania Phone: +370 - 686 760 53 Fax: +370 - 521 278 74 www.npc.lt e-mail: [email protected]


3. Project aim and general description Project “European Green Cities Network” is a 4 years project within the EC programme area of Thematic Networks. Starting date was 1 July 2001 – with partners Green City Denmark, Cenergia, Metec, Demekav, SIR and Zonnige Kempen. During 2002 we were offered the possibility to extend the project with partners from the new Euro-pean member states – and by 2 February 2003 partners NPC, EMI, NECA and Ventos joined the project. 3.1 Project background Urbanization is growing globally and the environmental, economical, and social issues of concern increases proportionally. At the centre of sustainable urban planning is housing, and it seems very difficult to keep up with the demand for efficient and sustainable housing solutions. The solutions provided for efficient space heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting systems, domestic appliances, and integration of renewable energy into buildings’ energy supply are continuously be-ing improved to satisfy the international targets of diminishing harmful environmental impacts, however, the improvement are not always acknowledged why there is an urgent need to demon-strate, disseminate and develop the latest best available technologies to architects, city officials, engineers and building owners. If the current level of innovative technologies can be lifted into the mass market, a substantial amount of energy can be saved. Most of these technologies have come a long way the last decade or two - they are efficient and functional. However, they are often still too expensive and are weak in the competition with more conventional traditional technologies. In addition, use of new technologies may be inhibited by ex-ternal or mental factors, such as design, placement, restructuring, lack of knowledge, image etc. and it is therefore very important to bring all ends of actors together (from authorities, developers, pro-ducers, builders, consultants to end-users) to overcome such market barriers. To a large extent, technological gains within sustainable urban housing are achieved through indi-vidual demonstration projects or individually funded research projects that will have limited impact on generic or cross-sectored issues because of lacking international dissemination. Technological solutions to solve specific technological problems have often been the main objective for research and development in the field of sustainable urban housing. Such technological solutions have furthermore been restrained by demands of profitability for the producer why the level of de-velopment is not quite as high as the scientific potential in Europe gives reason to be. For example we see that many new developed technological solutions are entering the market very slowly due to architectural design problems. That is a main reason for our project focus on e.g. improving building integrated solar solution.


3.2 Project objective The objective of the project is therefore to speed up cross-national awareness and dissemination by establishing a secretariat for sustainable urban housing to support the international ambition to reach profitability for existing technologies and strengthen innovation to meet increasingly complex environmental challenges in the field of low energy technologies. To honor this ambition, the secretariat will work from following bipartite strategy: • Speed up innovation. • Stimulate market development. The innovation is thus at the centre of the project both in content and in organization, and the struc-ture of the project stimulates creativity and the exchange of ideas that will result in new and/or im-proved solutions that are disseminated extensively to all relevant networks or activity centers of sustainable urban housing. 3.3 Project work content The project work content is described in 4 work packages: WP1. Network secretariat and dissemination WP2. Sustainable Urban Housing conferences WP3. Green Build Monitoring Tool development WP4. Sustainable Urban Energy Management training 3.4 WP1: Network secretariat and dissemination

The objective of the project was primarily to create a secretariat for a large number of the European cities’ demonstration projects within low-energy and environmental sustainable housing in order to speed up market development and stimulate further innovation. Starting point would be 3 established networks from EU 3rd Framework Programme (EHEN), 4th Framework Programme (European Green Cities Network) and 5th Framework Programme (PRESCO) - which all together represents some 50 European cities, a similar number of builders and consultants, research institutes etc. The secretariat will focus on collecting and disseminating information from a number of selected demonstration projects in the European cities - and thus be extending the European Green Cities’ Network from 11 to a minimum of 50 European cities. City politicians, city administration planners, builders and consultants in the housing sector are of-ten lacking inspiration and information for their actual new building projects to follow low-energy housing principles. The secretariat will consequently keep strong dialogue with key actors and pro-vide valid information to all levels of stakeholders, and likewise introduce new gateways to im-provement.


The concept of a Green City is experienced as a very useful tool in this dissemination process - amongst others by focusing on the city process of using highlighted demonstration projects to raise citizens awareness, to develop city politicians’ and city departments’ housing strategies in the more sustainable direction, and to make first demo project results spread to broader implementation as we for example have seen in Antwerp region, Belgium, in Salzburg region, Austria, and in Kuopio re-gion, Finland, within the previous EU Thermie project "European Green Cities" comprising 11 demonstration projects in 9 EU countries including locally adapted training and dissemination proc-esses. Network secretariat will be established at Green City Denmark office, establishing and running a website for European Green Cities Network to inform about good examples of low-energy housing projects - with links to manufacturers and consultants etc. of shown new technologies. European city representatives will be addressed to inspire and to disseminate. The Steering Committee will be the main body for the network management and consist of a mem-ber from Project Coordinator and each of the contracting partners. Each member will be committed to fulfill their organization’s obligations in the project. The Steering Committee will assign and monitor all the suggested project groups in the network. The Steering Committee will establish and maintain a dissemination strategy to ensure strong dis-semination of results from selected demonstration projects. The strategy must reflect the current needs within sustainable urban housing and be targeting a faster market development. Both the sup-ply and the demand sides of the market must be considered and dissemination will consequently be targeted towards producers, contractors, developers, as well as city politicians, authorities, builders, planners, and end-users. The project extension with 4 new partners from Eastern Europe will widen out the dissemination to Eastern Europe. NAS partners will be included in the daily network secretariat activities, such as project inquiries, access to an extensive knowledge base, contacts to international technology ex-perts, authorities/Green Cities, manufactures etc., and will be able to present demonstration projects on the EGCN web site. Project experiences will be transferred into the EGCN NAS dissemination process, so that a number of cities in each country will be addressed to hopefully establish a number of similar good city processes starting up in each country. Preliminary drafted the activities could be as follows, though starting up dialogue with NAS project partners will expectedly give changes to best possible adapt the activities into effective implementa-tions for each of the 4 NAS partner countries: 1. Initially selecting relevant 3-4 cities to address in each NAS partner country.

2. City key persons from politicians, city administrative departments, builders, technology manu-

factures/suppliers, architects/consultants, housing associations etc. will expectedly be addressed through our NAS partner to inform about possible given EU inspiration and guidelines etc. for improving housing quality.


3. From city responses we will appoint one city in each NAS partner country to be especially

addressed for locating the training course.

4. Carrying out the training course will be essential for bringing the dissemination process into the city network of mentioned key persons - being participating in the training course together with citizens’ representatives from local area committees, housing association tenants etc.

5. Results from the training course are expected to include a number of constructive drafted local

green action plans for the following local initiatives to promote housing area quality improve-ments

6. Results from local city training courses will be made available to primarily the firstly thought of other relevant cities in each NAS partner country - through direct addressing the city key person networks again with a recommendation to initiate similar local area training courses.

7. Results will also be made available to a number of other cities in NAS partner countries - and other NAS countries - through the project website.

8. Finally a number of selected NAS country cities will be addressed directly to introduce the pro-ject website.

3.5 WP2: Sustainable Urban Housing conferences Sustainable Urban Housing conferences will be prepared and carried out as 3 different European conferences throughout the four year project period focusing on different primary themes: Building integrated solar energy technologies and advanced energy efficient glazing. Healthy/emission free building materials and energy efficient ventilation systems. Renewable energy integrated energy supply for heating/cooling at building/district level.

The conferences will include exhibition and showcases of new developed technologies within each of the three identified thematic areas and at the same time form a “market place” for sustainable urban housing stakeholders. As such, they will also be innovation synergy centers that are provided periodically to gather European human capital in the field. The conferences are crucial for dissemi-nation of knowledge and experience, where interested actors and networks will have access to the outcome. For each of these three themes a project group will be established to prepare relevant content for the conference, and project partners will appoint relevant specialists from their country to join the pro-ject group. The project extension with four new partners from Eastern Europe included 2 more conferences.


3.6 WP3: Green Build Monitoring Tool development Monitoring technologies will be further developed - primarily the "Green Build Tools", where focus will be on possible developing a kind of "Green Bonds" system, so that a certain higher number of integrated low-energy benefits in your housing project actually can lead to improved financing pos-sibilities/better financing possibilities. There have been implemented solutions for this in Austria - and some of the Danish financial insti-tutions, which are shareholders of Green City Denmark, have expressed interest to join the project on this issue. The “Green Build” project group of experts and stakeholders of sustainable urban housing will fur-ther develop the list of recommendations for sustainable urban housing projects and assign a rank-ing value for each possible choice of building component etc. regarding energy and environmental alternatives for the building project. Besides this the project will include two dimensions of further development: Financial institution experts will be involved to set up a suggested “Green Bonds” proto type

system for giving financial preferences to energy & environmental sustainable house building. City planners will be involved to set up a possible extension of the Green Build tools from indi-

vidual building to a specific urban district level. After completing the list of recommendations and allocating a ranking value for each building com-ponent choice etc., the “Green Build” system will be presented to city district authorities, develop-ers, builders, planners, producers and other target groups, who would benefit from this monitoring technology. Their revision and evaluation will lead to a final adjustment before testing the “Green Build” system, eventually leading to a “European Green Cities Certificate”. For testing a European urban housing project/urban district will be selected for a demonstration of the monitoring technology. Involved partners in the actual chosen housing project (from authori-ties, builders, consultants, investors to end-users) will be asked to try out using the Green Build tools - and to closely follow the process in order to evaluate the impact of the “Green Build” moni-toring tool on each target group. 3.7 WP4: Sustainable Urban Energy Management training To gain added value from disseminating results from the European sustainable housing projects in this network, it is necessary to educate the market. This means that not only the technicians and technological developers need to continuously keep up with the growing technological develop-ments, but also city representatives, builders and end-users need to be inspired and trained for proper focusing on and deciding upon sustainable housing initiatives. Thus a main action for the European Green Cities Network project will be the development of basic training courses on energy & environmental sustainable building design for key persons from au-thorities, utilities, builders, contractors, consultants, institutes/institutions, manufactures, service partners, end users, etc., involved in the sustainable building technology sector.


Sustainable Urban Energy Management courses will be developed, planned and carried out as 4 specific training courses throughout the 4 year project period - aiming at the urban management process to make good examples of low-energy housing principles spread faster regarding urban planning and development, urban renewal and actual new built projects. The courses will include tools to: prepare local and regional awareness campaigns to public and private decision-makers and end-

users about sustainable housing initiatives. improve designing of new or retrofit urban housing projects by clarifying possible energy &

environmental benefits along with economic short term / long term savings. designing drafted plans for implementing large scale solar energy supply or other renewable

energy supply sources for the individual city/region. develop a model for drafted “local Agenda 21/Kyoto strategy” (local Green Action Plan).

The finally developed training course will be offered to the European Green Cities’ Network target groups - and will be using actual selected relevant European demonstration projects as case exam-ples for practicing on during the course. Our training methodology is linking implementation of actual housing demonstration projects to systematically monitoring on energy, environment and economic parameters - to convert into awareness information, education, and training - and to influence on city politics and Sustainable Urban Energy Management for the housing sector. A well experienced Green City approach will be used as reference frame and a “working model” to achieve higher added value within the selected participating European project cities as well as “cross-European” added value through European Green Cities Network. The project extension with 4 new partners from Eastern Europe included 4 more training courses.


4. Project work performance 4.1 Steering Committee and Project Management The Steering Committee has been the main body for the network management and consists of a member from Project Coordinator and each of the contracting partners. During Steering Committee meetings each member has been committed to fulfill their organization’s obligations in the project. The Steering Committee has assigned and monitored all the ongoing work and project group results within a total of 11 Steering Committee meetings in the network. To ensure continuity and coher-ence, the Project Coordinator Green City Denmark has planned frequent meetings in Steering Committee, project groups, etc. Referring to Steering Committee the Project Coordinator has administered the EC contract and been responsible for project management to ensure implementing the specified work packages and tasks within the total project. This includes the budget management and controlling as well as production of progress reports and other project documentation. Project partner Cenergia Energy Consultants has been overall responsible for the technical coordi-nation of development work and dissemination etc. The established communication strategy and dissemination strategy are linked in the sense that the main dissemination events - being the 5 conferences and 8 training courses - was supported by web-site dissemination of selected projects and technologies as well as experts’ presentations and results from these events. 4.2 Organising of project groups The organisation of the Steering Committee and project groups has been done as illustrated in fol-lowing figure:

Steering Committee Chaired by

Green City Denmark A/S

Project Group RTD 1:

Building integrated solar energy and efficient glazing Chaired by SIR

Network Secretariat Green City Denmark A/S


Healthy building materials and ventila-

tion Chaired by Metec


Efficient energy supply for heat-

ing/cooling at build-ing/district

Chaired by Demekav

Project Group Green Build Moni-toring Tools devel-

opment Chaired by Cenergia

Project Group Training model

development Chaired by Zonnige

Kempen


The Steering Committee assigned a member to be chairman for each thematic RTD group, and the chairmen have been responsible for the formal establishment of the final groups, and for involving external experts to participate. Each group has prepared a conference on their theme and has been responsible for keeping up with market development and technological innovation to ensure that the conferences represented novelty value and thus could contribute to innovation. RTD 1 project group on solar/glazing was chaired by SIR and included Zonnige Kempen – and later on NECA. This project group prepared conference no 1 in Belgium. RTD 2 project group was chaired by Metec and included Cenergia Energy Consultants – and later on EMI. This project group prepared conference no 2 in Italy and no 3 in Hungary. RTD3 project group was chaired by Demekav and included Green City Denmark – and later NPC, SIR and Ventos. This project group prepared conference no 4 in Salzburg and no 5 in Czech Repub-lic. Project group for developing of monitoring tools was chaired by Cenergia Energy Consultants and included SIR and Green City Denmark. Project group for developing of training model was chaired by Zonnige Kempen and included Metec – and later on Ventos. 4.3 EGCN network members and national experts EGCN network members are shown on the EGCN website www.europeangreencities.com Throughout the project period we have added new members from involved experts and city repre-sentatives etc. The network has been extended with other networks by disseminating EGCN news and main events periodically to the EHEN network, the PRESCO network and the network of Sustainable Cities & Towns. 4.4 Work package deliverables and milestones Below we show milestones / due dates according to the contract technical annex – and compare with the actual month of implementation for the specific tasks mentioned as milestones. Below we also give comments to each work package regarding deviations from contractual expecta-tions. For the contract amendment involving NAS partners – we have added milestones from EGCN NAS contract related to WP 1 (dissemination), WP 2 (conferences) and WP 4 (training).


Milestones for WP 1 – Network secretariat

No. Description Criteria Due date (con-tract)

Implementation

M1 Establishment of Steering Committee

All network partners must be represented and participate in the responsibilities of the Steer-ing Committee

01 (July 2001)

Sept 2001

M2 Establishment of communica-tion strategy

All network partners must agree to the decided communication strategy Level of derived activities in network partner regions

01 (July 2001)

April 2002

M3 Establishment of dissemination strategy

All network partners must agree to the decided dissemination strategy Level of derived activities in network partner regions Number of new solutions dis-seminated to stakeholders

01 (July 2001)

April 2002

M4 Establishment of each project group

Appointed chairman for each project group, who has agreed to the responsibility of the group

01 (July 2001)

Sept 2001

M5 Establishment of each thematic group

Appointed chairman for each thematic project group, who has agreed to the responsibility of the group

01 (July 2001)

Sept 2001

M6 Establishment of web site Informative of the project Informative of relevant RTD technologies Informative on European initia-tives on sustainable urban hous-ing

01 (July 2001)

Test version Sept 2001 Launched May 2002

M7 Half yearly update of web site Level of new inputs to an update Timing of update Number of visits from relevant actors Number of inquiries derived from the web site Number of inquiries to the net-work Number of producers interested in presence on the web site

Starting 07 (Jan 2002)

Test version April 2002 Nov 2002 May 2003 Dec 2003 June 2004 Dec 2004 June 2005

M8 Progress report 1 Level of project activity Level of inputs from project partners and thematic work

13 (July 2002)

Tech rep 1 Feb 2002 Tech rep 2 Sept



Implementation

groups On time

2002 Finance rep 1 Sept 2002

M9 Progress report 2 Level of project activity Level of inputs from project partners and thematic work groups On time

25 (July 2003)

Tech rep 3 Feb 2003 Tech rep 4 Nov 2003 Finance rep 2 Nov 2003

M10 Progress report 3 Level of project activity Level of inputs from project partners and thematic work groups On time

37 (July 2004) Tech rep 5 Feb 2004 Tech rep 6 Aug 2004 Finance rep 3 Aug 2004 Tech rep 7 Feb 2005

M11 Final report Level of congruence between contract goal setting and goal achievement On time

49 (Aug 2005) Aug 2005

Comments: We find very good progress for this part and achieved results promising for effective dissemination etc. Additional tasks regarding EGCN NAS WP1 (dissemination): No. Description Criteria Due date

(contract) Implementation

Mn1 Dissemination of results from selected EGCN demo projects to NAS countries

Level of dissemination activities Number of enquiries to the net-work

Febr 2003 – June 2005

Ongoing till June 2005

Mn2 NAS access to EGCN network of cities, experts, producers etc.

Level of participants in network activities

Febr 2003 – June 2005


Mn3 Dissemination from demo projects in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Lithuania on EGCN website

Number of NAS country pro-jects on EGCN website

Febr 2003 – June 2005


Mn4 NAS participation in EGCN Steering Committee meetings

Level of NAS participation each meeting

Febr 2003 – June 2005


Mn5 Dissemination process e.g. like mentioned steps 1-8 after NAS partner adjustments

See chapter 3.4 Febr 2003 – June 2005



Comments: “Due dates” are not specified in contract – dissemination activities will be ongoing throughout project period Milestones for WP 2 – Sustainable Urban Housing conferences


Implementation

M12 Establishment of each RTD group

Appointed chairman for each thematic project group, who has

01 (July 2001) Sept 2001

M13 Programme for each conference Realistic Degree of innovative content Targeted

f/Conf. 1: 03 (Sept 2001) f/Conf. 2: 15 (Sept 2002) f/Conf. 3: 27 (Sept 2003)

April 2002 Dec 2002 Aug 2004

M14 Completed conference 1 Min. 80 participants from iden-tified target groups Positive feedback Derived new initiatives

07 (Jan 2002)

October 2002


25 (July 2003)

October 2003


39 (Sept 2004) November 2004

Comments: Planning and completion of conference 1 and 2 have been carried out within project groups involving experts as ex-pected. Work and achieved results have been satisfying with many good derived new initiatives. Timetable followed to a reasonable degree. For conference 3 we decided a change – because of the contract amendments per 2 February 2003 including EGCN NAS new partners and 2 more conferences. Thus we revised so that next conference was in Hungary in April 2004 – and further more conference in Salzburg, Aus-tria, (hereby named conference 3) was done in November 2004. Last conference was in Czech Republic June 2005.


Additional tasks regarding EGCN NAS WP2 (conferences): No. Description Criteria Due date

(contract) Implementation

Mn6 Decide location for each of two NAS conferences

Selected proper locations Febr – June 2003

June 2003

Mn7 Define partners for organising first conference

Level of NAS expertise in-volvement

Aug – Dec 2003

Dec 2003

Mn8 Programme and RTD area defined for first conference

Technology issues matching 3 overall selected EGCN technical focus areas

Jan – Sept 2004

February 2004

Mn9 Completed first conference Number of participants New technologies presented Derived new activities Level of interest from media

Oct 2004 April 2004

Mn10 Define partners for organising second conference

Level of NAS expertise in-volvement

Nov – Dec 2004

Dec 2004

Mn11 Programme and RTD area defined for second conference

Technology issues matching 3 overall selected EGCN technical focus areas

Jan-May 2005 April 2005

Mn12 Completed second conference Number of participants New technologies presented Derived new activities Level of interest from media

June 2005 June 2005

Comments: “Due dates” are not specified in contract besides in timetable for Mn 9 and Mn 12. So due dates are here estimated during first month of starting up the NAS project. Milestones for WP 3 – Green Build Monitoring Technologies


Implementation

M17 Establishment of “Green Build” project group

Appointed chairman for the project group, who has agreed to the responsibility of the group

01 (July 2001)

Sep. 2001

M18 Development and progress meetings in the development group

Pragmatic model for applicable tool Progress

05 (Nov 2001) 15 (Sept 2002) 37 (July 2004)

1. draft Dec 2002 2. draftAug 2003 3. draft Dec 2003

M19 Drafted “Green Build” value system

Meeting the requirements of the idea Impact accessibility Simple system Foundation for “Green Bonds” prototype and “European Green Cities Certificate”

07 (Jan 2002)

1. draft Dec 2002 2. draft Aug 2003 3. draft Dec 2003 Test draft June 2004

M20 Testing the impact of the “Green Build” system on the different levels of target groups

Public interest Economic value Applicable and pragmatic tool for identified target groups

33 (March 2004)

Dec 2004 (tested) June 2005 (evaluated)


Comments: Still we did not in the thought of version reach the specific planned two initiatives: 1) “set up a suggested “Green Bonds” prototype system for giving financial preferences to energy & environmental sustainable house building pro-jects” and 2) “set up a possible extension of the Green Build tools from individual buildings to a specific urban district level” ---- “eventually leading to a European Green Cities Certificate”. From discussing “Green Bonds” possibilities with financial institutions it is now evident that issuing a new type of Green Bonds is not found realistic – although same financial institutions are welcoming the Green Build value system to improve financial evaluation of specific building projects regarding taxable value of a property. Revised consideration for this work package is concluding from EGCN partners that we will fulfil the main target of developing the Green Build monitoring and evaluation tool to be tested and evaluated as milestone M20 indicates. And also we will include set up of the two mentioned specific tools targeting financial evaluation and urban district level – in some modified versions compared to the specific contract wording. Milestones for WP 4 – Training courses on Sustainable Urban Energy management


Implementation

M21 Establishment of Sustainable Urban Energy Management project group

Appointed chairman the project group, who has agreed to the responsibility of the group

01 (July 2001)

Sept 2001

M22 Development of training course Valid system that can be easily adapted to different regional needs

01 – 18 (July 01– Dec 02)

Course 1 April 2002 Course 2 Oct 2002 Course 3 June 2003

M23 First draft of course content Progress Meeting the needs of the target group

15 (Sept 2002)

1 draft April 2002

M24 Final model for training course Evaluated by a representative target group Comprehensive and meeting the needs of the target group

18 (Dec 2002)

1. draft Dec 2003 2. draft June 2004 3. draft Dec 2004

M25 Completion of Training course 1 (Belgium)

Participant satisfaction Perceived possible application Level of derived activities

23 (May 2003)

October 2002

M26 Completion of Training course 2 (Austria)


30 (Dec 2003)

April 2004

M27 Completion of Training course 3 (Greece)


37 (July 2004) Dec 2004

M28 Completion of Training course 4 (Italy)


42 (Dec 2004) June 2005


Comments: After starting up project work we found that previous developed Green City concept for local training by linking demo projects to awareness rising/training and further to the city processes of Sustainable Urban Management was a sufficient basis for focusing the development on different key person groups related to energy & environmental efficient building such as builders/technicians, tenants, citizens/schoolchildren, city departments, technology suppliers/manufacturers etc. Thus we decided to postpone working out final model (M24) until developing/testing different training approaches regarding target groups, which turned out to be builders/technicians/students in Belgium (Course 1), tenants in Austria (Course 2) and prepared for schoolchildren in Greece (Course 3). All of them based on the first developed Green City model for local training. As explained in hereby reporting we have now developed the final version of EGCN training model. Work was fulfilled within project overall timetable and with achievements according to contractual conditions. Additional tasks regarding EGCN NAS WP3 (training courses): No. Description Criteria Due date (con-

tract) Implementation

Mn13 Inspiration and ideas for training from EGCN partners

Exchange of experiences within the network

March-June 2003

June 2003

Mn14 Identification of target group for each NAS training course

Target groups aiming at key persons regarding EGCN activities

Sept 2003 – June 2004

Dec 2003

Mn15 Draft of final course content for each NAS training course

Linking to general developed training model

Jan 2004 – Febr 2005

Dec 2004

Mn16 Completed training course no 1 (NECA)

Number of attendants Attendants’ evaluation Level of derived activities

March 2005 Expected March 2005

Mn17 Completed training course no 2 (VENTOS)


April 2005 Expected June 2005

Mn18 Completed training course no 3 (NPC)


May 2005 January 2005

Mn19 Completed training course no 4 (EMI)


June 2005 June 2005

Comments: “Due dates” are not specified in contract besides in timetable for Mn 16 - Mn 19. So due dates are here estimated during first month of starting up the NAS project.


4.5 Time schedule

2001 - Month Activity

July Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Steering Committee Meeting no 1-2 Malmoe Volos Conference (organize project groups) RTD1-2-3 Training Courses (organizing) Proj group Green Build (organizing) Proj group Dissemination Web test Reporting


Jan Feb. Mar Apr May June

Steering Committee Meeting no 3 Salzburg Conference draft program RTD 1 Training Courses 1. draft Green Build Dissemination Web test Web launch Reporting Tech no 1



Steering Committee Meeting no 4 Westerloo Conference no 1 (draft no 2) Westerloo RTD 2 Training Courses no 1 Belgium Green Build 1. draft Dissemination Update web Reporting Tech no 2


Jan

Steering Committee Meeting Conference no 5 Training Courses Green Build Dissemination Reporting Then time schedule was revised when 4 new NAS partners were included from 2 February 2003.


2003 - Month

Activity Feb. Mar Apr May June

Steering Committee Meeting no 5 - 6 Torino Grenoble Conferences Training Courses no 2 (start up) Austria Green Build Dissemination Update web Reporting Tech no 3



Steering Committee Meeting no 7 Torino Conference no 2 (+ NAS conf info ) Torino -(NPC ) Training Courses no 3 (start up) Greece Green Build 2. draft 3. draft Dissemination Update webReporting Tech no 4 Finance 2



Steering Committee Meeting no 8 Copenhagen Conference no 3 (+ NAS conf info) Budapest (NECA) Training Courses no 4, 5 (start up) Italy NECA Green Build test version Dissemination Update webReporting Tech no 5



Steering Committee Meeting no 9-10 Salzburg Copenhagen Conference no 4 (+ NAS conf info) (NECA) Austria Training Courses no 3 (ending) Greece Green Build tested Dissemination Update web Reporting Finance 3 + Tech no 6



Steering Committee Meeting no 11 Decin Conference no 5 Decin Training Courses no 4 - 8 (ending) NPC NECA EMI VENTOS Italy Green Build Evaluated Dissemination Update webReporting Tech no 7 Final report


5. Results WP1 Network secretariat and dissemination 5.1 EGCN network secretariat The network secretariat was established at Green City Denmark’s office, with the main objective to develop and run a project web site informing about good examples of low energy housing projects, with links to manufacturers, consultants, etc. of the presented technologies. The established communication strategy and dissemination strategy were linked in the sense that the main dissemination events - being the 5 conferences and 8 training courses - was supported by web-site dissemination of selected projects and technologies as well as contributions and results from these events. One of the project obligations was to push forward innovation. In this respect the network secre-tariat and project partners have contributed to establish networks for “Expression of Interests” to-wards the EC 6th Framework Programme in June 2002. Two contributions were forwarded from an extended “European Green Cities Network” comprising a total of 25 “core partners” from 19 European countries – see also: http://www.europeangreencities.com/EG6/ec6.htm The “Green Quality Standards” proposal (new buildings) was aiming at involving at least 200 pro-spective partners from the 19 countries and the “Green Quality Rehabilitation” proposal (urban re-newal) was aiming at involving at least 40 organisations in the R&D work being suggested. Besides this the European Green Cities Network have supported two other networks for expression of interests regarding the building sector – one being the “Kyoto Buildings Network” and the other being the “Solar Energy Cities”. During the project period a number of European potential, interested partners have been contacted – aiming at supporting the submitting of proposals for the launched calls on “Eco-buildings”. Information about these EC calls for proposals has initiated many contacts to the secretariat about providing possible project partners and technology contacts, which has generally supported the EGCN network activities. 5.2 EGCN website dissemination EGCN has established the website www.europeangreencities.com with the purpose to disseminate knowledge and experiences regarding sustainable urban housing technologies in order to stimulate market development and help speed up innovation. The web site is meant as an inspiration tool and a place where you can find your way to eco build-ing.


You will find information on: • Demo projects - 23 demo projects are

presented incl. technology details etc. • Low energy technologies: solar,

ventilation and building materials and energy supply.

• Energy prices. • EGCN Green Build Monitoring Tools. • EGCN Training Tools. • EGCN activities. • EC calls. • Members. • Links. • Publications. A brochure has been produced in order to illustrate and disseminate the web site contents. EGCN secretariat elaborates web statistics for the project website. The findings show a continuous growth in the number of visitors each month until June 2004. The main findings are: Period Total

number of visitors

May – June 2002 1,000July – December 2002 1,942January – June 2003 3,891July – December 2003 7,938January – June 2004 10,150July – December 2004 8,606January – June 2005 8,495

Visitors mainly come from the nine partner countries; and this last half year primarily from Greece, Italy, Belgium and Lithuania with total around 5-600 from each country. It is interesting to see that following an EGCN conference we clearly see a rise in the number of visitors from the country where the event has taken place. Both the conference in Belgium in Octo-ber 2002 and the conference in Italy in October 2003 has a considerable rise of visitors. From Denmark the number of visitors has been on the same level since the project start. Regarding the number of visitors from the four NAS partner countries, there was only very few prior to the start-up with NAS partners in 2003. But during this last half year more than 600 visi-tors, which is expected to grow considerably during next few years.


Outside project partners countries most visitors are from UK, Canada, Netherlands, Australia, Ger-many and Spain. Among new visitors this last period are Japan and Portugal with each 150–200 visitors. 5.3 EGCN partners’ national dissemination Austria To push the solar market in the Salzburg region, SIR has succeeded in implementing several pro-jects within the EGCN project period. Besides of the housing sector, tourism-buildings offer a great potential for use of solar energy, because of the high domestic hot water demand during the summer period - for wellness requirement. But also the positive image of well integrated solar collector fields is important. In a big-scaled tourism region with nine hotels in the upper grade (St. Johann – Alpendorf) potentials for solar energy use has been calculated as an EGCN showcase for possible implementation. Dissemination activities in Salzburg region were also effectively carried out during preparation of EGCN conference in November 2004, which attracted much interest for EGCN activities. Belgium Dissemination process started during preparing of first EGCN conference in Westerlo by introduc-ing EGCN project objectives to local and regional experts and representatives for city authorities, housing associations, architect and engineering companies etc. As conference and first training workshops were very successful Zonnige Kempen was involved in very many follow-up initiatives from e.g. the Belgian Solar Association and the Flemish Housing Association and also educational institutions like the teacher training college “Van Roey Institute” and the universities for architects and engineers. Developing of guidelines for sustainable housing, site visiting programmes for schools, master de-gree project work programmes for university students and awareness programmes “Dialogue” de-veloped together with IT company and tenants’ representatives for introducing energy conscious behaviours e.g. used for tenants in a new “Vorselaar” housing project. Czech Republic VENTOS started preparing EGCN information material through 2003 related to a mew Czech law that obliged public buildings to implement energy savings. And following in 2004 carried out a “road show” to 10 cities and towns in the Decin region, which is in the northern part of the Czech Republic. Information material was presented to promote interests for the EGCN project about en-ergy efficiency measures in buildings and energy supply. Presentation material is shown in www.europeangreencities.com EGCN Training tools. All cities/towns expressed interest in the project and would like to participate in the Czech EGCN training courses that were prepared based on the gathered findings from the information meetings in connection with the “road show”.


Dissemination showed efficient results as many of city representatives initiated implementation of the potential energy saving measures e.g. based on the carried out energy audits on selected munici-pal buildings. Denmark Cenergia has been very active in relation to giving support on the implementation of new building regulations, which are based on the EU Energy Performance Directive for Buildings. In Denmark as well as in the rest of the EU countries the EU energy performance directive for buildings is being implemented at present. In Denmark this will lead to a 25-30% reduced energy consumption for heating and domestic hot water, and at the same time 2 new low energy standards 1 and 2 are intro-duced with a respectively 50% and 25% further reduction of the energy use. Here the energy stan-dard 2 can e.g. be seen as the expected minimum demand that will be implemented in 2010 accord-ing to the EU directive. Setting such governmental standards will be most efficient in Denmark for promoting EGCN re-sults, because we have been used to demo projects over so many years that we somehow may loose interest in new demo projects. At national building fairs and environmental fairs Green City Denmark has exhibited results from European Green Cities Network projects to raise awareness for energy efficient building technolo-gies and building energy supply systems. EGCN projects have also frequently been used to inspire e.g. Danish Union of Housing Associa-tion, Building Association Environmental Forum, Regional Associations of City Engineers about possible similar or supporting Danish national or local sustainable building initiatives. Periodical newsletters from Green City Denmark to 1200-1500 Danish private and public compa-nies, institutions etc. have informed about major EGCN events such as the conferences, training workshops, partner meetings and website updating with new information. Greece In EGCN project partner website www.demekav.gr users can find general information on the Pro-gram and Network EGCN (aims, short description, duration, budget and members), information on ongoing actions that DEMEKAV has uptake within the program’s obligations - demo presentation, news of the Program (meetings, conferences, etc) and link with the website of the Program. Infor-mation on the Program is supplied in Greek and English version. The training program carried out by DEMEKAV was combined with the diffusion of information on the Program & Network EGCN to schoolteachers and students. Cooperation between schools and DEMEKAV that has been developed accruing from the training program, is a continue process and we estimate that this could help furthermore in the future in the aims and objectives of the pro-gram. Reports concerning DEMEKAV’s activities within the Program and Network have been published in the local Press the previous years.


Hungary For Hungary, the energy conscious design is new issue, the technology applications are more and less in pilot project phase, only some European projects, high budget buildings (infrastructure, bank sector, etc.) academically and university departments active in this field. For this reason the EGCN dissemination and networking is very relevant for almost all housing and energy supply technolo-gies There were good inspiration on combined biomass-solar systems from Austrian examples, small scale cogenerations examples of Belgium and Czech Republic, PV heat-recovery ventilation and biogas plants and energy crops from Denmark, as well as hybrid ventilation option from Italy. EMI started dissemination by setting up very good contact with Local Government Districts of Ujpest, Ferancvaros and Josefvaros in Budapest. Municipalities of Siofok and Debrecen outside Budapest also have been involved in EGCN cooperation. The nationwide housing association LOSZ agreed to cooperate with EMI on this project. And also the Technical University of Budapest was involved regarding energy saving and solar energy equipment. Dissemination process was most efficiently supported during preparation of the EGCN conference in Budapest – and mentioned key partners are now involved in several follow-up initiatives e.g. revised approach for urban renewal in Josefvaros by using EGCN training tools. Italy Metec started dissemination related to previous European Green Cities Thermie project by website presentation of demo projects in Abruzzo and in Brescia which both were innovative – and very soon you could tell the growing Italian interests by number of Italian visitors to these EGCN web-site presentations. These interests were supported by Metec training and dissemination activities based on innovative ventilation solutions solar wall and PV-assisted heat recovery for project at two Milano school gymnasia buildings during 2002-2003 and further on during preparation of EGCN conference in Torino October 2003. These activities influenced builders like ATC Torino e.g. preparing Vinovo project see http://www.europeangreencities.com/demoprojects/italy_piemonte/italy_piemonte.asp And Torino city key persons were much inspired so that a number of public biddings were realised during 2004-2005 comprising main issues like energy analysis and audits for public housing asso-ciations building property, heat metering systems and regulation systems installation in existing building served by centralised heating systems, eco-building projects and bioclimatic architecture systems (design and construction), integrated solar and biomass heating systems in buildings (in-stallation) and strategic and demonstration projects based on RUE and RES in buildings (CO2 re-duction more than 300 ton/year) and public interventions or programmes for energy saving in build-ing sector.


Lithuania NPC’s dissemination approach was awareness rising by promoting interests for organisation of “Home Owners Associations” which will make house owners more aware of possible energy sav-ings etc. The cooperation with “Vilnius Home Owners Association” was started with the purpose to increase the efficiency of information to multi-flat house dwellers. During the project period NPC has been preparing own website www.npc.lt (click EGCN NAS) to include EGCN information in Lithuanian language showing selected projects of sustainable energy usage in the buildings. Also a Lithuanian demo project for EGCN website has been prepared com-prising the successfully renovation of buildings and dwellings in Valakampiai home owners asso-ciation – one of the Vilnius city districts. And a brochure about potential energy savings in the multi-flat houses has been prepared for distribution to the inhabitants of the houses that are super-vised by NPC. Dissemination and training results are most visible as 4 blocks of flats started or prepared building renovation including much energy saving possibilities – and regarding energy supply from biomass the cooperation to district heating association supported the spreading to Lithuanian district heating companies about e.g. expert presentations on EGCN conferences in Salzburg and Decin. Poland NECA started dissemination work in cooperation with Piaseczno – a suburb to Warsaw. A demon-stration project for energy savings and efficient new ventilation system assisted by solar in a pri-mary school was finalised in 2003 and this school project has been presented on the EGCN website. EGCN dissemination was very efficiently carried out during 7 regional information workshops linked to the national programme for promoting Thermo Modernisation Act in Poland. NECA has been updating EGCN website with presentations from the conference on Sustainable Building 27-29 October 2004 in Warsaw, which was one of NECA’s “own” arranged conferences to be disseminated on EGCN website. The conference was a “regional” conference for Central and Eastern Europe as one of several globally arranged conferences on Sustainable Building. 5.4 EGCN NAS partners’ dissemination steps 1-8 Regarding the more specific dissemination strategy for the 4 EGCN NAS partners following results were achieved: Step 1: Initially selecting relevant 3-4 cities to address in each NAS partner country. Czech Republic: In the Northern Bohemian region around Decin Ventos selected Děčín, Rumburk, Varnsdorf and Mikulášovice. Hungary: Initially the city of Budapest with its districts Újpest, Józsefváros and Ferencváros were selected, but also Dunaújváros és Székesfehérvár was selected as potential partner outside Buda-pest.


Lithuania: Vilnius was selected as city for training and dissemination, as NPC supervises dwelling houses in the capital of Lithuania. Poland: Preliminary tree towns were chosen – Piaseczno, Legionowo, and Kosierzyna. With all of them NECA have already co-operated in other projects (Legionowo), or during the energy policy (Kocierzyna and Piaseczno) elaboration. Step 2: City key persons from politicians, city administrative departments, builders, technology manufactures/suppliers, architects/consultants, housing associations etc. will expectedly be ad-dressed through our NAS partner to inform about possible given EU inspiration and guidelines etc. for improving housing quality. Czech Republic: Ventos performed the “Road Show” in the whole region addressing ten munici-palities, with focus on municipality officials (mayors, technical and ecological departments’ repre-sentatives etc.) Hungary: City key persons from politicians, civil servants of local governments, technology suppli-ers (Wienerberger, Solart, NIKECELL, Rockwool, Austrotherm, etc.) Architects/consultants (Inde-pendent Ecological Centre, Dr. Osztrolucky Miklós, Szűcs Miklós, etc) Universities ( TU Buda-pest, Szent István Egyetem/Gödöllő, Széchényi István Egyetem/Győr, etc.) Housing asociations (LOSZ, LETÉSZ) was addressed about the possible EU inspiration and guidelines. Lithuania: Vilnius Municipality, association “Namų valda ir savininkai”, Vilnius Gediminas Tech-nical University, Home Owners Associations, Lithuanian District heating association were ad-dressed through prepared and based on EGCN NAS project ideas materials, through already imple-mented success stories in Lithuania and abroad, through information and material got from confer-ences, etc.

Poland: In short meetings with decision makers in all towns NECA informed them about the project and expected results, and asked them about their interest in co-operation with NECA in the project. Step 3: From city responses we will appoint one city in each NAS partner country to be especially addressed for locating the training course. Czech Republic: Representatives of dozen municipalities were attracted by the organized training courses. All four initially selected cities were present on all performed trainings. Hungary: Budapest and its districts were appointed as first location of the training course for giving inspiration about green aspects in the revitalization and for using higher scale of renewables. Lithuania: Vilnius – 8 dwelling houses were chosen for organizing tenants’ trainings. Trainings have been carried out for chosen 8 houses – in December 2004 and January 2005. Questionnaire, brochure and these houses’ energy passports were used as additional means for optimizing training.

Poland: All of them responded positively, but due to the location and previous co-operation, Piaseczno has been chosen as a training partner in the project. A special training workshop took place in Piaseczno on 24 February 2005.


Step 4: Carrying out the training course will be essential for bringing the dissemination process into the city network of mentioned key persons – being participants in the training course together with citizens’ representatives from local area committees, housing association tenants, etc. Czech Republic: Ventos experienced creation of closely collaborating network of four neighbour municipalities during the training. And participants initiated local efforts to continue the process of periodical meetings/training and to implement energy saving measures. Hungary: In the training local authorities’ representatives, technicians of local authorities, engineers of local authorities companies, and representatives of housing associations were participating to-gether with other experts from building industry, universities, consultants and architects. And this was clearly initiating new approach to prepare urban renewal projects by focusing on potential en-ergy and environmental benefits. Lithuania: Results of NPC trainings are discussed very often during consultations in NPC held for inhabitants, the dissemination is also active on NPC website. There is close cooperation concerning renovation process in dwelling houses between NPC and Vilnius Municipality/ Vilnius District heating, which is responsible for this process in other urban districts of Vilnius. Poland: Training in Piaseczno as well as dissemination through the regional workshops and confer-ence on Sustainable Housing in Warsaw October 2004 was clearly supporting networking amongst city key persons to promote energy efficiency initiatives. Step 5: Results from the training course is expected to include a number of constructive drafted local green action plans for the following local initiatives to promote housing area quality im-provements. Czech Republic: Regular meetings on this topic, commitment to perform energy saving steps on selected public buildings, interest and testing of new technologies etc. has been initiating local ac-tion plans for energy savings. Hungary: Local action plans for the Budapest districts (Újpest, Józsefváros and Ferencváros) were drafted relating to higher use of solar systems, for finding more opportunities for advanced district heating systems and for developing water and waste management. The Independent Ecological Centre developed an initiative for autonomous city. Lithuania: Two houses are in the process of establishing Home Owners’ Associations after these trainings, and two more are in the process of preparing documentation for renovation of the houses. Poland: Preparing of new action plan was started by the Piaseczno City Authority for the next four years, and inspired from the training some “green activities” will be included – e.g. solar panels for the local swimming pool and thermo modernisation of city owned houses. Step 6: Results from local city training courses will be made available to primarily the firstly thought of other relevant cities in each NAS partner country – through direct addressing the city key person networks again with a recommendation to initiate similar local area training courses.


Czech Republic: Through direct addressing the city key persons our networks were contacted again after conference in Decin and last training workshop with a recommendation to initiate similar local area training courses and by sharing achieved results. Hungary: The following year each of the six regions will organize EGCN training for city key per-sons, housing associations and exeperts. The locality of the trainings will as follows: Győr, Vesz-prém, Pécs, Szeged, Debrecen, Miskolc Lithuania: Vilnius is the largest city in Lithuania and represents dwelling houses sector best of all. All other cities have the same problems and obstacles for renovation as Vilnius has. That is why success of training in Vilnius 8 houses shows the great potential for the same kind of activities in other houses of Vilnius, as well as other Lithuanian cities. Poland: Since the other two cities are interested in the same activities NECA will conduct the simi-lar training in autumn 2005. Step 7: Results will also be made available to a number of other cities in NAS partner countries – and other NAS countries through the project website. Czech Republic: Ventos project website has been updated to address other cities as well. Hungary: Through direct mail 25 cites will be contacted with information on the training outcome and information about the website. The cities are: Győr, Sopron, Szombathely, Zalaegerszeg, Nagykanizsa, Kaposvár, Pécs, Veszprém, Pápa, Siófok, Székesfehárvár, Szekszárd Dunaújváros, Tatabánya, Esztergom , Vác, Albertirsa, Cegléd, Szolnok, Kecskemét, Salgótarján, Eger, Miskolc, Debrecen, Békéscsaba. Lithuania: Other cities have more or less the same problems with multi-flat houses that where built long time ago. That is why partners could use the same model of NPC trainings and implement it in their own city by using NPC website for inspiration. Poland: Same training as Piaseczno is more or less already given to a number of other cities through the regional meetings and workshops for EGCN and thermo modernisation dissemination activities. Step 8: Finally a number of selected NAS country cities will be addressed directly to introduce the project website. EGCN secretariat has addressed a number of the new Eastern European EU member cities in the same way as EGCN cooperating networks EHEN, PRESCO and European Sustainable Cities & Towns to inform about EGCN project website main contributions to promote Sustainable Urban Housing.


6. Results WP2 Sustainable Urban Housing conferences 6.1 Conference no 1 on solar technologies etc. in Belgium The first conference was carried out on 1-2 October 2002, organised by the EGCN project group on “Building integrated solar energy and efficient glazing” in a cooperation with Province of Antwerp and together with national and foreign experts. The conference was held in Westerloo, Belgium, arranged primarily by EGCN project partners Zonnige Kempen (housing association), Belgium, and SIR (energy institute), Austria. During conference preparation was carried out meetings with expert groups in Austria and in Belgium. Looking at the European market for solar energy, it shows remarkable potential in most countries for extended application of solar technologies in the building and housing sectors. As an example, the total amount of annual in-stalled solar collector area in Belgium was in 2002 less than the installed collector area in Austria within a period of two weeks. Therefore the main objective of the conference was to present current European know-how to the region of Flanders. However, all parties interested in solar energy technologies and optimisation could participate. Presentations from European and Belgian experts, as well as presentation of realised demonstration projects, were given in order to inspire and transfer know-how about different uses and applications of efficient solar energy. The conference programme including the experts’ presentations is available on www.europeangreencities.com - EGCN activities October 2002. Each of the two conference days app. 90 participants from target groups of architects, engineers, technicians, authorities, housing associations and manufacturers were actively involved – and they expressed generally very positive interests in adapting much of given inspiration to own ongoing future housing projects. Amongst presented and exhibited new developed technologies regarding the main theme of building integrated solar and efficient use of glazing were: • Thermal insulation and solar control functions of modern glazing (Saint-Gobain).


• New design solutions for passive use of solar (UK presentation). • Solar design by orientation of living spaces, buffering by functional spaces etc. (Belgium). • Solar integrated system combined with biomass district heating (Austria). Main derived initiatives: 1. As an example of derived new initiative is that the solar industry organisation who gave a

speech at the conference, afterwards initiated a new labelling system in Belgium for solar collec-tors with guarantied results minimum 80% of estimated energy effect.

2. Another derived initiative is that the Flemish organisation of all housing association after the

conference has established a new standard regarding new projects, so that housing associations now are asked “why not using solar collectors?” if this is not suggested.

3. As a visible result of this and inspiration from conference was that 15 housing associations had

projects ongoing with solar collectors included in 2003. Before the conference only Zonnige Kempen had such projects.

4. Also a derived result was launching of a brochure from Zonnige Kempen illustrating a visit pro-

gramme to selected housing projects in the local area of Westerlo, so that visitors can visit the different projects and be informed each place by local tenants etc.

5. Amongst participants at conference were architect students. They were inspired to prepare a

follow-up workshop at the conference location Kamp C to work out proposal for bioclimatic buildings “Ecowonen”. This was repeated with next year’s students again.

6. Province of Antwerp being co-financing the conference decided to arrange a follow-up confer-

ence totally financed from the Province because of good results. Main visible results from this first EGCN conference was a remarkable growth of the solar market in Belgium during following years 2003-2004 which can be seen on the EU solar statistics http://www.estif.org/index.php?id=46&backPID=2&pS=1&tt_news=46 6.2 Conference no 2 on efficient ventilation etc. in Italy RTD 2 project group with EGCN partners Metec, Cenergia and EMI has been preparing and carry-ing out the second EGCN conference, which was arranged in Torino, Italy, on 23-24 October 2003. Conference theme was “Energy Efficient Ventilation Systems and Healthy Building Materials”, which was met with highly interests from many of the 140 participants. There was a main interest for the presentations from technology producers Viessmann, MTS Group and Permasteelisa – and their presented new technolo-gies like heating systems based on renewable en-ergy sources, solar collectors for building air cool-


ing and “double skin” energy efficient building envelope. But the participants also expressed high interest in the presentations from foreign speakers from the EGCN network – like solar assisted ventilation systems, natural ventilation systems and ecological building materials. Exhibition and site visits during the conference comprised: • Presentation of the most interesting building projects carried out within the interventions for the

Torino Olympic Winter Games and Visit to the Olympic building sites. The 2006 Olympic Win-ter Games in Torino is an important and strategic event for the city with reference to the devel-opment and diffusion of energy efficiency and ecological buildings.

• Exhibition of Danish “EcoVent” system for solar assisted ventilation with heat recovery. • Visit to Environment Park: The visit to Environment Park and the involvement of the Environ-

ment Park company was also related to the theme of ventilation and healthy building materials. Presentations from European and Italian experts about innovative technologies - as well as show case demonstration projects – were given in order to inspire and transfer know-how to hopefully many future derived initiatives in Torino region. The conference programme including the experts’ presentations is available on www.europeangreencities.com – EGCN activities October 2003. The main interest from follow-up meetings with conference participants were regarding the need for strengthening local municipal building regulations to better reflect possible linking between build-ing permission and maximum energy consumption rates if possible. At the same time it was proposed to initiate tax relieves to encourage the use of renewable energy sources and e.g. small CHP systems. Regarding existing buildings it was highly recommended to encourage building renovation projects through the so-called ESCO companies that are bringing in own financing of new technologies, which will be paid by transferring to ESCO from savings in future operational costs. The following Torino Conference derived initiatives have been integrated with dissemination and training process in Italy: • Students of Politecnico of Torino contacted Metec&Saggese with the aim to cooperate in order

to prepare their graduation thesis. One student worked on a graduation thesis concerning Solar-wall type air solar collectors and one student attended to a training period in Metec&Saggese on innovative technologies building projects.

• Solarwall type air solar collectors applications have been studied frequently and 4 building ap-plications have been realized. New applications for solar crop drying systems have been studied in Italy and 2 demonstration projects will be realized.

• A 3 days conference and exhibition near Torino was organized in September 2004 by IDRO-CENTRO, a commercial company of energy technologies and building equipment. IDROCEN-


TRO installed a Solarwall system on the south façade of its store-building and organized the conference/exhibition in the site of the Solarwall installation.

• Province of Torino issued a bid advertisement for financing energy analysis and audits for pub-lic housing associations building property in order to individuate optimal energy saving inter-ventions www.provincia.torino.it/ambiente/energia/bandi/bando_spape

• Province of Torino issued a bid advertisement for financing heat metering systems and regula-tion systems installation in existing building served by centralised heating systems www.provincia.torino.it/ambiente/energia/bandi/bando_contabiliz

• Province of Torino issued a bid advertisement for financing eco-building projects and biocli-matic architecture systems (design and construction). www.provincia.torino.it/ambiente/energia/bandi/bando_eco

• Province of Torino issued a bid advertisement for financing integrated solar and biomass heat-ing systems in buildings (installation). www.provincia.torino.it/ambiente/energia/bandi/bando_legna_sol

6.3 Conference no 3 on energy savings etc. in Hungary The first EGCN NAS conference took place in Budapest, Hungary, on 21-22 April 2004. EGCN partner EMI was in charge of planning and carrying through the conference in a close cooperation with Budapest Technical University and the local authority in the Újpest district in Budapest. EGCN project group RTD2, other EGCN partners and invited experts were assisting in planning and giving presentations at the conference “Environmental Friendly Building in Europe”. 118 representatives attended the conference from local authorities, architects and technicians, tech-nology producers, teachers and students etc. On the first conference day there were presentations from Hungary, UK, Belgium, Austria, Poland, Denmark and Italy. Interesting was the presentation about solar installations from NECA, Poland, because the presented pioneer project using solar installation in Polish hospital actually was introduced by EGCN project “Green Solar Regions”. On the second day two workshops were arranged. One workshop was on building issues, e.g. eco-logical buildings, and district heating, and one on sustainable city policies. Afterwards a site visit tour to demo sites in Budapest was carried out. According to EGCN partners being present and the feedback to EMI staff in the organising commit-tee the participants were generally very positive. Derived initiatives were already started up in two areas during conference/workshop days in Budapest.


One interesting initiative was a visit from EGCN partners to Újpest Local Government being very interested in using EGCN strategies for renovating the many old housing blocks in their district comprising some 100,000 inhabitants in Budapest periphery. Another interesting initiative was a meeting with the participating windows manufacturer VELUX about possible introducing a renovation strategy for flat-roofed old concrete blocks where renova-tion may partly be financed by establishment of an extra roof storey. Previously EGCN partners have been involved in similar demo projects where the establishment of such a roof storey resulted in 18% extra residential area. These attractive roof apartments were sold and could finance a con-siderable part of the total renovation costs. Conference expert presentations are available on www.europeangreencities.com EGCN activities April 2004. After conference the local government of Ùjpest district plans to make steps to become a Green City, making a city renewal program meeting the requirements of sustainable development. The vice mayor took part in the EGCN conference FORUM underlining the city’s interest in green top-ics. For further cooperation with the EGCN network the main areas of initiatives are as follows: • Pilot project reconstruction works on concrete panel blocks (half of the dwelling units of the

city is belonging to this type). In this context, a successful EU project consortium participation is established in Green City Building. The project is started in September 2005.

• Reference innovative model building in the city centre related to renewable solar energy sources and PV assisted ventilation (in DEMOHOUSE project).

• Demonstration project in Székesdűlő, retrofitting three former military building to social hous-ing (in DEMOHOUSE project).

• Decision on monitoring the energy consumption in a two years old new social dwelling belong-ing to the Local Government (“swolow house” project).

• Initiatives on pilot project on energy conscious thinking in education in the district’s primary schools on using the experiences of the Belgian and Greek Partner.

• Established pilot project on heat recovery ventilation in one apartment of the “swallow house”, and plan for using “swolow house” as a country side reference on solar DHW and enhanced ventilation.

Ferencvàros district is famous of its city renewal program in the inner city, which has been running for more than 12 years. The chief architect presented the past and future city renewal policy at the EGCN conference. Following initiatives were inspired by EGCN network cooperation: • ÉMI with SEM IX took part in two IP proposals addressing new glazing unit application in in-

ternal courtyards, as WHOLE LIFE BUILDING and ECOSPACE. Unfortunately, the proposals were not accepted, however ECOSPACE as initiative became part of ENBRI Research agenda.

• Solar systems use - related to the Hungarian obligation of EPD coming from year 2006 - should be increased in the city renewal as well, Best Practise examples are sought.

• Facade renovation program is to be monitored using new innovative materials as silicate ther-mal insulation inside.

ÉMI inspires the national federation to be more active on solar system applications. ÉMI with ÉMSZ and EGCN partner Cenergia are also members of a Collective Research proposal, in which a new approach for roof as ACTIVE ROOF concept is to be developed, aiming higher level of inte-


gration of ventilation, roof windows and active solar systems as well as intelligent roof solutions. The initiative contains the followings: • Enhancing the roofers role for advising and promoting new solar systems in higher level of in-

tegration. • Underlining the aspects of safety in installation and maintenance works of the roofs. • Special attention in green roof application, integrating other active roof elements and solar sys-

tem equipments. • Facade thermal retrofitting with special attention of adequate ventilation systems. The Collective Research proposal (EUR-ACTIVE ROOFer) was accepted, EU has signed the con-tract, and the project will start in 2005. The Company Csizy és Lukács Kft., general contractor on new housing projects, is one of the high quality developers, active in 1600 new apartments in Budapest’s District XI with close cooperation to the local government. After participating in the conference, the company intends to involve more „green” in the project as follows: • As district heating in Hungary has a very bad reputation, avoiding this, but using environmen-

tally good solutions, they will think over the heating/cooling systems. • Potential use of the solar system as PV and solar collector in greater scale on the pitched roofs. • Heat recovery PV ventilation in the roof top apartments with the assistance of Cenergia and

ECOVENT. • Cogeneration possibility for own electricity sourcing. The first bloc of their project has been ready without special attention on green solution, but in the following blocs (1200 dwelling in three years) the above initiatives are to be pilot projected. Józesfváros has the greatest revitalizing project called (Corvin-Szogony) closed to the Ring. Fol-lowing the conference and the preparation of the training, they show great interest on finding a green solution of the new energy supply of the area, the use of solar equipment on the roof, enhance water reuse management and the selective waste management. In this context an intensive coopera-tion of the Danish EGCN partners on green development is foreseen and a study tour to Denmark in 2005 autumn is organised. Following the examples of the Budapest and Salzburg conference and the training - the local gov-ernment of Albertirsa shows interest to establish municipality run biogas plant with the combination of organic waste treatment. There are options for applying subsidy from EU structural funds, so a pilot project proposal is planned to establish in 2005 autumn. Similar private initiative on medium scale biogas plant is raised in Csobánka, where mentally sick peoples home and an international youth centre is starting cooperation with the local government. Both projects plan some solar im-plementation as well. 6.4 Conference no 4 on district heating etc. in Austria The EGCN conference “Biomass & District heating 2004” in Salzburg, Austria, 5-6 November 2004, was focusing on RTD 3 Project Group technical issue about building energy supply systems. A special challenge is how to modernise district-heating systems to be still economic sustainable


when the consumers ask for less – or maybe none at all – energy supplied, e.g. for passive-house standard. One example presented was so-called “micro-nets” – small district heating systems for a few houses based on biomass fuel. This linked well to Danish examples – and we had input from Greece re-garding experience on district heating and district cooling. One Danish presentation was focused on “the challenge to district heating network operators – meeting reduced energy consumption interests from low-energy house owners”. This focus area issue was successfully presented and discussed at the conference by speakers from Greece, Denmark and Austria – and by many interested building and energy sector representatives. Conference presentations are available at www.europeangreencities.com EGCN activities Novem-ber 2004. On the following day 6 November was arranged visits to biomass energy supply plants showing this latest development in Austria with more flexible district heating systems, so-called “micro-nets”. Combined use of solar and wooden pellets produce heat distributed by a pipe system reduced to 40% of “normal” dimensions, capacities and investments because of small buffer-tanks installed at each consumers place. Peak load can then be considerably reduced. Also an exhibition was arranged at the conference hall, which was office building of Salzburg’s main energy supply company. Some 20 companies demonstrated very many interesting energy technologies and energy management systems etc. During coffee breaks and lunch break the conference participants could visit the exhibition that was also open for local other visitors on both 5th and 6th November. At the conference there were 90 participants. We had many very positive reactions e.g. from Hungarian participants, who are working at a project about biogas, and wanted to get a better contact and more information about the Austrian project in Laschensky.


In Salzburg biomass is a very important theme and in the housing sector it plays a very important role. At the biomass conference two of the biggest housing associations of Salzburg were speakers. Energy-efficient building standards and alternative energy (like thermal solar and biomass) are used in the most of their projects, so smaller housing associations have to do the same and to get the know-how to get their place in the competitions. Slogans of energy efficient building and biomass heating are used in the marketing of selling apartments and ecological housing is a parameter for living-quality. The development of biomass-district heating plants in the region of Salzburg is growing very fast. In October 2004 we had 44 biomass district heating plants working in the region of Salzburg, in June 2005 there are already 48 and further 8 are in planning. So it is very important to communicate the experiences and the newest technical standards, so that new projects can be developed and of course they have also to be promoted. The EGCN biomass conference has done a very good thing in information especially for communi-ties (five mayors of communities were participating at the conference), so that it is easier for them to decide and to inform their citizens. It is very useful to collect the experiences and expertises of different countries and to exchange: Salzburg is very active in developing smaller wood-sheet and pellets district heating plants mainly supported by farmers or farmers-co operations. A lot of innovations in technique, but also in regula-tion and control and optimisation have been done in the last years e.g. also in Denmark. In 2004 Salzburg has reached a very high percentage of new houses supplied by biomass energy with 67%. Many of these heating systems are single heating for apartment houses. The more effi-cient way is to force district heating powered by biomass. In Austria and especially Salzburg many of these projects are planned, but we do not have a lot of experience with district heating, like in Denmark. In the latest time some innovative new developments have been made, in technology but also in design and increasing the efficiency of smaller district heating systems. At the biomass conference in Salzburg there was a very good mixture of long time experience from specialists with district heating systems (from Denmark) and new innovative technologies and best practise examples from different places. Participants from 11 EU countries, several representatives of communities and housing associations from Salzburg and technical planners visited the conference and got a lot of new input. In three communities in Salzburg the political representatives had to decide about a new district-heating project. In this phase it is very important to get wide and competent information. In St. Jo-hann, Bischofshofen and Schwarzach the communities have decided now a new district heating system with biomass. The government of Salzburg has decided a program to reach the target of Kyoto. This program says that this is only possible by enforcing the renovation rate and a special fuel switch program to ex-change fossil heating systems with renewable energies. Biomass will be the most important factor to reach this target. The government of Salzburg has cooperated in the organisation of this EGCN-Biomass Conference because the realisation of this program needs a lot of information for all in-volved partners like communities, housing associations and planners. A very important fact is to have an overview of what happens in this sector in other countries, to get a feeling that this is really


an important field, and to see that the technology is already well-engineered, this helps policy mak-ers to reach a decision. 6.5 Conference no 5 on biomass etc. in Czech Republic Conference theme was: Practical Utilization of Renewable Resources for Building Energy Supply. Regional Development Agency for Usti nad Labem region was contracted to support the conference preparation. The Regional Development Agency of the Usti-Region PLC is an organisation for sup-port and co-ordination of economic and social development of this territory. It is designed on the same basis as development agencies successfully operating in EU member states. The goals, struc-ture and a range of activities of the Agency are tailored to the regional conditions and environment.

Conference was conceived as two-day event 15-16 June 2005 in Decin with first day packed with presentations, followed by site-visits of successful installations of most advanced technologies relevant to the subject. Conference program and site visits were prepared and consulted with city of Decin and other EGCN partners. Small exhibition of latest technologies was also prepared as part of the conference, where several local firms presented its products/installations. From the EGCN project was presented very

efficient heat exchange unit from Danish company EcoVent, which was later also used for training purposes. Conference took place in social hall Strelnice, best and largest building of its kind in Decin. The building is very representative and is used for most important Decin events. Simultaneous translation was provided for both conference days with microwave audio sets. Also abstracts of each presentation were provided in both Czech and English languages. Opening speech was made by Vice mayor of Decin City – and then national experts from Ministry of Industry & Trade, Czech Energy Agency and Ministry of Environment presented about energy policy, governmental project support and legislation regarding renewable energy.


EGCN partners from Poland, Hungary and Denmark presented actual projects regarding solar col-lectors in Polish hospital, ecological retrofitting of old military buildings in Budapest and low-energy housing in Denmark. Technical University of Prague presented Czech experiences with solar collectors – and EGCN partner Ventos presented own innovative company projects on buildings and biomass use. Further on biomass production research results were presented by experts from Czech Research Institute of Crop Production in Usti and Danish company DIC – and expert from Usti Region Envi-ronmental Department gave overview of regional biomass resources. Finally Decin City expert presented the new district heating energy supply system in Decin, which was financed from Danish Eastern Europe Environmental Fund and realized in cooperation to Dan-ish experts and technology suppliers. The special innovative part is that 1/3 of heat production is based on utilizing geothermical energy combined with drinking water supply for Decin. Total of 78 participants came to the conference. After the conference was prepared complete CD with all presentations, additional information, photos etc. that was distributed to all participants, who were interested. Conference presentations are available on www.europeangreencities.com EGCN activities June 2005. Site visits comprised the mentioned new district heating plant in Decin, family house using solar collectors and heat pump installed by EGCN partner Ventos and different cogeneration heating plants utilizing biomass from straw, sawdust, wooden pellets. Evaluation form was compiled from open-ended questions asking for lectures preference, technol-ogy experience, overall impression and interest in follow-up workshops. Evaluation of answers showed, that acceptance of the conference was very good. Several times was mentioned, that par-ticipants liked clustering the presentations topics to four groups by its focus. Biggest interest en-joyed presentations about already realized projects (were mostly mentioned). The state policy and legal framework didn’t find such an interest. About third of the responses expressed interest in fol-low-up workshops, which is positive for the future dissemination. Judging from the participants’ reactions during the conference and also from opinions formulated on following training, conference fully met project expectations. It not only served as a platform for meeting of technology producers, municipality officials, civil engineers, teachers and other relevant subjects, but also as an incubator for future projects. Already we can see three initiatives: • One wood chips producer is about to close contract with local biomass heating plant operator

and they are in talks to form new entity taking care of distribution of biomass. New collection buy-out places would be open with common distribution for several biomass heating plants.

• Hungarian EGCN partner decided to purchase the EcoVent heat exchange unit that was pre-sented on the conference for information, training and dissemination purposes


• Cooperation on practical utilizing of research results from biomass crop production between Usti Research Institute of Crop Production and Danish company DIC

6.6 Short evaluation of main conference results At the end of project period all EGCN partners could agree on a very successful linking between preparatory project group work, conference presentations and follow-up initiatives making clearly progress regarding technology & market development – both within conference location region and some of EGCN partners countries e.g.: Westerlo conference – solar use in Belgium. Torino conference – solar wall in Torino and heat recovery ventilation in Torino and Budapest. Budapest conference – energy conscious urban renewal in Budapest. Salzburg conference – micronet district heating initiatives in Denmark and biomass use in Belgium. Decin conference – biomass use initiatives in Czech Republic and Denmark.


7. Results WP3 Green Build monitoring tool development 7.1 Developing financial tools The EGCN project group for developing monitoring tools started work by focusing on “Green Build Financing Tools”. During the first project period was elaborated 4 different systems: • Energy Point System, Salzburg region, Austria • Dutch system and Belgium considerations • The proposed Greek system for Energy Certificates • Danish planning system “Green Catalogue” Austria has successfully implemented the Energy Point System as a regional financing system. The system in one region is slightly different from other regional systems regarding which energy saving measures is given highest weight when evaluating an actual building project proposal. The system in the Salzburg region has shown very good results. Since the start in 1994 the percent-age of households using solar for domestic hot water heating has raised from 9% to 64 % in 2001. The Dutch system is giving company tax deduction for specific environmental technology invest-ments and energy saving investments, if the chosen technologies are listed on the official “Envi-ronmental List” of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment or on the “En-ergy List” from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance. In Belgium considerations are linked to the new EC Energy Performance Directive – when form-ing the National Belgian Energy Performance Norm. Families that do not comply with the standard (fall 20% below the standard) will have to pay a contribution. This contribution will be made avail-able for those who perform 20% better than the standard. As a result the financing will thus be fa-vouring energy friendly projects. In Greece the EC Energy Performance Directive also has initiated a proposal for a National “Regu-lation of Rational Use and Energy Saving” (RERUES). The basic elements are regional performed systems for Energy Inspection, Energy Study, Energy Indicators, Energy Identity Card for each building and the resulting Energy Classification of each building. The Energy Identity Card will be a future integral part of the legal basis for issuing construction licence for a new-built or renovated building. Each existing and new building will be classified. Thus the system is expected to affect the financ-ing system for building projects, because the actual building Energy Classification will expectedly heavily influence house-buyer demands and purchase prices. In Denmark we are focusing on the “Green Catalogue” planning system which will hopefully de-velop into a system that can influence financing institutions to improve financing of building pro-jects with a high score according to the Green Catalogue point system.


Regarding financial tools the project group has been discussing outlined thoughts about “Green Bonds” with several Danish financial institutions – after which our project group concluded: • “Green Bonds” are not considered realistic regarding housing projects directly.

• But regarding energy supply systems like wind-farms and solar plants the idea about highlight-

ing energy & environmental concerns into issuing shares is kind of the thought of “Green Bonds”.

• Green Build tools regarding housing projects are considered very important to achieve improved

financing of more sustainable housing by providing basic information for setting of a higher building valuation value.

Main project group progress and EGCN partner contributions regarding Green Financing monitor-ing tools was made by SIR’s contribution to developing the Austrian Energy Point System for Salz-burg region into a revised extended “Ecological Point System” – and by Cenergia’s contribution to Copenhagen Solar Cells Exchange, where you can now buy shares in solar photovoltaic projects. 7.2 Developing building oriented monitoring tools Based on present developed comprehensive project material we can summarise primary project con-tributions until now to be: • Elaborating on Green Build energy & environmental check-lists and point-systems. Especially

the development of the Belgian DCBA check list system. • Testing this system on minimum requirement standards for three Danish cities Copenhagen,

Aalborg and Kolding. • Elaborated performance quality follow-up procedure step 1-5. • Setting up A-B-C-D levels for 4 different solar low energy quality standards. • Validation of the Green Build tool regarding performance indicators and key values for selected

specific technologies. • Test of energy characteristic model as basis of energy quality control.

Amongst other things we have had a broad discussion within EGCN partners about our agreed main interest to influence national work in project partners’ countries to utilise the “Green Catalogue” tool of energy efficiency indicators within the preparatory work for new national standards for implementing the EU Energy Performance Directive by end of 2005. Seven of our ten EGCN partners are directly or indirectly involved in own national preparation for the EU Energy Performance Directive – and five of EGCN partners have been involved in the EU project “Green Catalogue” with Cenergia as Project Coordinator. Thus our EGCN contribution to the specific building oriented monitoring tools has been focused on Green Catalogue related elaborating and dissemination activities together with an activity concern-ing testing of a new “energy characteristic” model for building projects where you can asses the energy quality by simple monitoring of key data in 3 – 4 months. This is measured in W/m² for a building project. And in a Danish best practice example 3 W/m² heat consumption was obtained


during the summer period, and 10 W/m² during winter period. This is 10 times less than for existing housing blocks. Finally should also be mentioned work on a proposal for a “Green Diploma” for housing projects in Denmark that could be extended into a tool also for urban areas by including losses in energy sup-ply systems as e.g. district heating systems. If this is combined with an assessment of the energy supply system including energy losses in con-nection to this it could be suggested as basis of an “European Green Cities Certificate”. The “Green Diploma” model is suggested in 3 levels (A, B and C), where level C is near to normal minimum demands, but including demands on “energy quality control” and use of an “energy and environmental check list”. The main areas of the “Green Diploma” are: 1. Introduction of an “Energy Plus” standard which is one level better than normal minimum de-

mands. E.g. in Denmark use of low energy standard 2 which is 25% better than normal.

2. Use of an “energy quality control” system for building projects. This includes: blower door tests, thermo photography and energy characteristics / energy signa-ture together with a green accounting after one year of operation (including heat use, DHW use, electricity use etc.).

3. Use of “Green Catalogue” BAT sheets to ensure an energy quality which is better than normal for a number of technologies. See www.greencatalogue.com .

4. Use of the “Green Catalogue” energy and environmental check list and point system.

5. Other areas: use of an adapted energy supply system with small losses. - avoidance of dangerous materials - documented bio factor - documented total economy - building project prepared for use of solar energy.

For more information (in Danish only) see also: www.grontdiplom.dk 7.3 Developing urban area oriented monitoring tools Besides looking into Green Financing tools and the more specific building oriented monitoring tools related to EU project “Green Catalogue” etc. project group development work is primarily aiming at urban district level as a main additional contribution to what is ongoing in other projects. Therefore the Green Build tool development in EGCN project is focusing on monitoring tools that can promote good urban initiatives and implemented solutions of sustainable building projects in-cluding check-systems for achieving demanded performance qualities throughout such initiatives being implemented.


That was also a reason for initial aiming at a possible “European Green Cities Certificate” labelling system, although after a while not considered realistic to reach final awarding of project cities within remaining EGCN project period. EGCN partners found that Green Build tools are most important to support market penetration for low-energy technologies. Looking into the achieved results for Salzburg region the market penetra-tion has been very successful: • App. 60% of all new built multifamily houses using solar. • App. 50% of all new built multifamily houses using biomass. • App. 30% of all new built multifamily houses using ventilation with heat recovery.

Our Austrian project partner SIR has outlined some main criteria for this very visible success achieved in Salzburg region: 1. “Say quite clearly what you want being promoted” (low-energy housing without using fossil

fuels they said in Salzburg). 2. Start with a few most important criteria (insulation, kWh energy consumption per m2 housing,

solar use, biomass use and heat-recovered ventilation being prioritised in Salzburg). 3. Ensure simple evaluation process (due to few criteria one person can easily evaluate all projects

in Salzburg region once a year).

Therefore our project group suggested development of the Green Build monitoring tool in EGCN project to be based on few main selected criteria – and that aiming at some city certificate labelling is still realistic although not within project period. Green Build tools from EGCN project should primarily be evaluation tool to show local politicians etc. what can actually be achieved in urban districts regarding sustainable building. Developing of Green Build tool thus was focused on giving priority to a few selected main tech-nologies and testing by using on selected urban districts in involved partner country cities being prepared for possible later European Green Cities Certificate labelling. From gained experiences during EGCN project start – our special approach could be in line with defined priorities in the project concept: to focus on the 3 selected technology areas of main impor-tance for sustainable building progress. 1. Building integrated solar and optimized use of glazing. 2. Energy efficient ventilation and natural/emission free building materials. 3. Renewable energy integrated in supply for heating/cooling at building/district level. Testing on e.g. an urban area in Salzburg, Volos or a city district in Budapest could be based on the obtained experiences in the 3 EGCN RTD project groups utilising e.g. the following checklist ques-tions: 1a. Use of solar energy? 1b. Percentage of heating respectively cooling and DHW supplied by solar? 1c. The extent of architectural well-integrated solar installation? (high , medium , low ) 1d. Optimized daylight use of glazing? (high , medium , low )


1e. Optimized passive solar use of glazing? (high , medium , low ) 2a. Use of heat recovery ventilation etc. And another main thing would be to focus on urban districts for at least three reasons: 1. Previous work on Green Build Tools and similar monitoring tools has been focused on individ-

ual building level / building energy demand. 2. European Cities are counting for more than 80% population in Northern, Western and Southern

Europe – and in Eastern Europe cities are fast expanding to attract more citizens due to higher living standard etc.

3. Rational use of energy in especially some of the Western and Northern European cities has met a growing new challenge from low-energy housing causing periodical problems with considera-bly higher energy losses in the distribution networks due to low consumption housing concepts.

Especially the third reason mentioned above turned out to be very interesting for the project group to elaborate on in connection with the presented “micronet” district heating systems at the confer-ence in Salzburg – since this mentioned “new challenge” from low-energy housing consumers is essential for the urban districts future energy efficiency developments. 7.4 Testing urban area monitoring tools Our project group then developed a test scheme for using Green Build monitoring tool on selected urban areas. A preliminary test was made on urban district of Saint Johann municipality in Austria after which evaluation was made together with some of city representatives. Testing the developed version of Green Build tool was next after carried out in urban areas of Pi-aseczno (Poland), Vilnius (Lithuania), Herning (Denmark), Volos (Greece) and Torino (Italy) after some adjustments from the preliminary test in Austria. The main purpose for this tool is to “monitor” city ability in relation to more sustainable housing and energy supply systems. And for possible developing procedure of giving an “European Green Cities Certificate” to cities that has reached a certain good level, that can inspire other European cities. Monitoring / evaluation tools for individual buildings have been developed in several other projects e.g. in the Green Catalogue project. Therefore focus will here in EGCN project be primarily on an urban area and secondly on the building level.


Below you see the developed test scheme - and testing results from EGCN partner Demekav regarding test on urban district in Volos (Analipsi): EGCN Green Build Tool – Test in: district ANALIPSI, Volos - Greece General information Name of city/district

Volos Municipality

Part of region / city District Analipsi Country / Nation Greece Inhabitants 85.000

Short description: Our case study urban area is the district “Analipsi” and more specifically the section confined by the streets “Analipseos”, “Kassaveti”, “A.Gazi” and “Maurokordatou”. It is a residential district in a relatively old section of the city.

Concisely, “Analipsi” is a residential district of big blocks of flats in the central urban area. It is a region of means to high incomes (petit bourgeois to bourgeois classes). The district is place of resi-dence for pensioners, tradesmen and public employees. We can observe a big rate of individual property (privately-owned buildings or apartments). Moreover, there are services supplementary to residence (supermarkets, ovens, butcheries, grocer-ies, restaurants and cafés). A Police Department and several school units neighbour with the district. Commonly, in both sides of the main road axes “Kassaveti” and “Analipseos” (among the wider streets of Volos), commerce and services are hosted in the ground floor of the buildings. Mass means of transport service sufficiently this urban region. Analipsi is a typical Greek urban district. Situated in the central urban zone, it is dominated by big blocks of flats, many of which recently erected. Most old buildings were lost due to big earthquakes that shocked the city on 1950. The old detached houses that managed to stand, gave way gradually to blocks of flats through the building system of quid pro quo. Commenting on the age of buildings a basic conclusion is that the newer the building the bigger its height.


The typology of newer buildings is relatively common. Traditional elements like roofs, front yards and atriums are ricocheted. The dominant building material is cement. All new buildings of 3 or more storeys have a flat roof and the floors are cased with tiles. They spare big casements and big balconies shadowed by awnings. Newer blocks of flats are marked by a variety of curves and col-ours to distinguish their exterior. Our test sample includes 15 buildings (blocks of flats and family houses), which sum as a total 178 residential apartments of various types and sizes. The majority of apartments are large (we have observed many four-room flats, roughly 100 s. m.). Testing Criteria 1. Energy consumption for the district (Fill in fields for m²netto OR m²brutto OR m³, depending on figures available)

District Regional aver-age

Regional stan-dard

kWh/m²netto.year kWh/m²brutto.year 126

All buildings are of poor en-ergy standards

All buildings are of poor en-ergy standards

Heating and domestic hot water

kWh/m³.year kWh/m²netto.year kWh/m²brutto.year

Only Heating kWh/m³.year

kWh/m²netto.year kWh/m²brutto.year

Only domestic hot water kWh/m³.year Electricity kWh/m2.year

Comments: Rate 126 reflects one apartment.

As far as the consumption of energy is concerned, it is important to notice the progress of connec-tion of the majority of flats with natural gas supply. We do believe that this turn will reduce the consumption of energy and, as a general, will upgrade the energy performance of buildings. We have a positive outcome in the case of buildings that already use natural gas and this is going to extend because of the big fluctuation of oil prices.

Conclusion: Average energy consumption is fairly low. But it is necessary to have a detailed look at the different types of buildings and the differences in buildings ages to evaluate more precisely about status and progress.


2. Energy Supply for heat uses for the district Fuels

District Regional aver-

age Biomass % Solar energy % Oil % 82 Natural gas % 3 Coal % electricity % 15 others % TOTAL % 100 100

Specific emissions of heating / hot water production of households

CO2 SO2 NOx Emission per

Inhabitant kg / year

Comments: Buildings from late 1950’s, from 1970’s and from 1980’s mostly use oil for heating production. On 2005-2006 there will be a change from oil to natural gas in the urban district’s heating system. This means that most of the buildings that use oil (82% of our test sample) will use natural gas, not in total but in a great percentage. Today the use of natural gas has a very low percentage; only 3% of our test sample uses natural gas for heating. The use of natural gas will reduce the emissions per year. Conclusion: These are not very excellent figures for the time being, but we believe that the forthcoming turn of district’s heating systems towards natural gas will make a positive change. 3. Energy efficiency of heat distribution systems Heat losses of distribution system, compared to total energy amount sold

%

Supply temperature of distribution system ˚ C 90 Return temperature of distribution system ˚ C 70

Additional information about activities Activities to increase efficiency of heat distribu-tion system

Percentage of households of

district

Windows made of aluminium % 40 Will of change oil boiler to natural gas boiler % 60 %


Comments: Forward and return temperatures indicate a certain amount of losses. The losses are relatively big, in the case of central heating systems, but this is a rather expected performance. Newer blocks of flats (in our test sample these are the buildings after 1990) use autonomic heating systems that give better performances. 4. Building integrated solar energy systems Amount of solar systems

Percentage of buildings of dis-

trict

Regional average

Amount of buildings using solar energy 10 % Unknown m2 installed solar installation per 100 persons 114 m2

Efficiency of installed solar systems Percentage of

total amount of solar collector systems of dis-

trict

Amount of solar collector systems gaining more than 350 kWh/ m2.year

Unknown

Architectural integration of solar installations Percentage of

total amount of solar collector systems of dis-

trict

Amount of well integrated solar collector systems %

Comments: In our case study district, we haven’t recorded any special application or installation for alternative energy production, or energy saving. The solar water heaters are merely individual flat solutions and indeed with a rather low presence, given the long lasting fair weather conditions in Greece. 17 out of 178 apartments that compose our sample use solar systems for the purpose of heating water.

The type of solar collectors mostly used in our area is SI – 130. The productivity of this collector is 130 lt of hot water and can work from – 20 oC to 160 oC. Each collector has a surface of 2m2.

In the building level it would be worthwhile to install a solar energy collective system to meet better the needs of all flats, while reducing individual costs and losses. Unfortunately it is not a common practise to confront the building’s energy demands in the stage of architectural study. This is very important because in this stage it is easier to incorporate on the building clever installations for the reduction of energy consumption and energy losses.


5. Efficient building ventilation system with heat recovery Instruments Briefly description Results Regulations by law No regulations Subsidies Subsidies may be given occasionally through

special Research Programs

Information activities Realised by the Regional Energy Centre of Thessaly

Will to alter the municipal build-ings

Realised examples / demonstration build-ings

“Tsalapatas” old brick and tiles factory and the building of DEMEKAV (situated out of the district Analipsi)

They use as demonstration projects

Other Comments: In Greece this is not yet a priority issue. However, in the local level take place some successful ac-tivities by the Regional Energy Centre of Thessaly. 6. Natural/emission free building materials Amount of actual renovation projects within district: ____________ Instruments Briefly description results Regulations by law No regulations Subsidies Subsidies are given occasionally through




Realised examples / dem-onstration buildings

Other Comments: In Greece this is not yet a priority issue. However, in the local level take place also on this issue some activities by the Regional Energy Centre of Thessaly. 7. Efficient use of glazing for passive solar gains Instruments Briefly description Results Regulations by law No regulations Subsidies Subsidies are given occasionally through




Realised examples / dem-onstration buildings

“Tsalapatas” old brick and tiles factory Uses as a demon-stration project

other


Comments: In Greece this is not yet a priority issue. However, in the local level take place also on this issue some activities by the Regional Energy Centre of Thessaly. Preliminary evaluation on EGCN Green Build Tool criteria for test in Volos: 1. Energy consumption. Average energy consumption is fairly low.

2. Energy supply Shows not very excellent figures concerning renewable fuels, compared to other municipalities in Greece. This may be caused by relatively less rural area in Volos Municipality. Regarding the urban district’s heating system a change from oil to natural gas will be estab-lished during 2005-2006.

3. Energy efficiency of heat distribution system. Potential for improved energy efficiency.

4. Building integrated solar energy systems. The use of solar installations is quite important, though it is not the main energy supply source, and is mostly used for heating water. Efficiency and degree of architectural well-integrated installations is unknown.

5. Efficient building ventilation systems. In Greece this is not yet a priority issue.

6. Natural/emission free building materials. In Greece this is not yet a priority issue.

7. Efficient use of glazing for passive solar gains. In Greece this is not yet a priority issue.

European Green Cities Certificate – considering Volos: Based on the above Green Build Tool criteria, we conclude that:

Volos is in a good position regarding criteria 1-2-3. Besides good results for criterion 1, there is a potential for even further improvements and for achieving improvements on criteria 2-3 as well.

Criterion 4 looks good, but could be better given the climate of the region. A constant close investi-gation is required to evaluate on solar efficiency progress and architectural integration on newer buildings.

On criteria 5 - 6 - 7 we should comment that, though subsides are rather limited, the Regional En-ergy Centre of Thessaly, with some successful examples to demonstrate, carries out a good work in Volos.

A preliminary conclusion is that Volos shows to be committed to energy efficiency programmes and further improvements regarding the Green Build Tool monitoring and evaluation criteria; al-though for some issues the policy is still incomplete.


7.5 Final model for EGCN Green Build Urban Area Monitoring Tool The main purpose for this tool is to “monitor” city ability in relation to more sustainable housing and energy supply systems. And for possible developing procedure of giving a “European Green Cities Certificate” to cities that has reached a certain good level that can inspire other European cities. Monitoring / evaluation tools for individual buildings have been developed in several other projects e.g. in the Green Catalogue project. Therefore focus is here primarily on an urban area and secondly on the building level. The monitoring tool comprises 7 criteria for monitoring/evaluating the urban area. For criteria 1, 2 and 3 it is possible to get figures and compare them to own regional or national standards/levels. 1. Energy consumption for the district

Yearly average energy consumption per m2 dwelling for heating, domestic hot water and elec-tricity compared to own national standard / national average.

2. Energy supply for the district Based on biomass/solar/waste heat or merely use of fossil fuels. Percentage contribution of total heating/cooling consumption for each fuel type - and calculation of emissions of CO2 and SO2. Compared to own average national levels.

3. Energy distribution within the district

Based on e.g. one low-temperature collective system or smaller local networks or merely indi-vidual building solutions. Monitoring energy loss percentage of total consumption compared to average own national levels. General evaluation of activities to reduce energy losses and possible integrated solutions to meet the risks for big energy losses due to a growing number of low-energy buildings in the district.

For the criteria below (4), 5, 6 and 7 it is not considered possible to get figures. In Austria it may be possible for part of criterion 4, but most likely a qualitative evaluation has to be made. It will in stead be a matter of registration of city polices / instruments / subsidies / building regula-tion to support such improvements in sustainable direction and registration of identified already built good examples in the urban area or the city.

1. Building integrated use of solar

Percentage individual building solar use in the district, evaluation of solar installation effi-ciency, and a general evaluation regarding high/medium/low degree of architectural well-integrated solar installations.

2. Efficient building ventilation systems with heat recovery

Percentage buildings in the district fulfilling conditions of ventilation with heat recovery at least 80% efficiency, air ventilation rate minimum 0,4 per hour, air tightness of building max 1,0 per hour and energy consumption max 0,4 W/m3 for ventilator.


3. Natural/emission free building materials – to reduce ventilation needs and to avoid/reduce environmental harmful substances e.g. PVC surface materials or freon in insulation. General evaluation of materials used for outer walls, roofs, inner walls, floors, ceilings, win-dows, insulation etc. throughout the district.

4. Efficient use of glazing – daylight use optimization and considerations regarding passive solar

contribution in winter periods and shading contribution in summer periods. General evaluation regarding degree of proper architectural considerations to both passive solar use and shading – especially to identify combined solutions to meet both requirements.

Based on the situation with the EU Energy Performance Directive for Buildings we know that in the future there will be demands concerning an overall energy figure concerning operation energy use for a building. For district heating areas it can then be an option to negotiate a basis for a maximum heating supply need for new buildings, so networks can be optimised in relation to the coming low energy consumption of the future. 7.6 Energy balance calculations Regarding criterion 2 there can also be carried out some energy balance calculations to evaluate consequences of possible e.g. changing from oil to biomass fuels in specific energy supply plants. Project group was assisted by Danish experts from the company PlanEnergi to develop such an ad-ditional tool that could be combined with the Green Build questionnaire. Calculation has been done for the urban area Piaseczno (Poland) and could similar also be carried out for other urban areas and cities. Conclusions were as follows: The fuel consumption in Piaseczno is dominated by natural gas, oil and electricity produced on coal. Renewable energy (wood) covers only 6 %. At the end use side room heating and domestic hot water heating dominate followed by electricity consumption in households, these tree categories cover 99% of the total end use consumption. Comparing with national Polish figures Piaseczno has very low energy consumption per inhabitant. And when it comes to CO2 emissions Piaseczno has only 1/3 of the national level. One main factor is the absence of energy consuming industry. Also, it has not been possible to collect information on the energy consumption in the industry. Even with the low energy consumption and low CO2-emission there is room for improvement. Re-placing 78% of the imported electricity by co-generation on natural gas and replacing coal at the heating stations in Piaseczno results in a reduction of CO2-emission by 24%. 7.7 Screening audit for urban area For each urban district being screened with above defined EGCN Green Build monitoring tool a report should be worked out to characterize this urban area according to considered proper urban sustainable building and building energy supply systems.


Danish CO2 emission based frame value in kWh/m² • a calculated for new build housing areas with 110 m² row houses in Denmark divided by garages and with district heating energy supply.

82

5843,5

32,5

20

12

412

10

10

7 10

17

10

10 10

15

15

10 15

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

A) Housing project according toBuilding Reg 1995 standard

B) Housing project according toBuilding Reg 2005 Standard

C) Housing project as B) butaccording to an energy (+)

standard (28% less energy usethan (B) excl. District heating

losses) incl. solar DHW

D) Example like C) but withoutsolar DHW here space heating

needs to be reduced to 75%compared to C)

kWh/

m² •

a

District heating distribution losses ( value of savings need to be transfered to user)

Common electricity use for ventilation and pumps ( transfered into heating by a factor of 2,5)

Heat losses in user installations

Domestic hot water (DHW) demand

Space heating demand

144

129

112105

90

8074,564,5

54,5

79,5

64,5

54,5

Cenergia February 2005

Basic information from the screening audit should firstly be filled into the questionnaire – and then evaluation and additional review of planning documents regulating the area and approved develop-ment plans etc. can be used to work out the screening report with highlighted main observations. During site visits should be taken representative photos of buildings and areas etc. to be illustrating in the report and for presentation in common evaluation meetings etc. For some urban areas it may be difficult to fill in all the specified required information for the ques-tionnaire. Then it is important to give other information that can indicate an estimate and be used for evaluation. Periodic screening report with filled in questionnaire as annex should give an actual presentation of the selected urban area to evaluate progress and to evaluate for possible being awarded with a “European Green Cities Certificate”. 7.8 Short evaluation of main Green Build monitoring tools results The Green Build monitoring tool aims to identify the energy balance of a whole city district includ-ing losses in the energy supply system. At the same time it is the idea that it should function as an energy quality control system, both at (1) a building level and at (2) a district level including the energy supply system. Quality control for a specific building can e.g. consist of blower-door test concerning air-tightness and thermo photography concerning cold bridges. Other control initiatives could be monitoring of an energy characteristic or energy signature for the heating consumption (W/m² as a function of outdoor temperature) and for the electricity consumption. The results on a building level can be compared with national energy standards like e.g. the new Danish system based on the EPDB with new minimum demands and 2 new low energy levels 1 and 2 with 50% and 25% improved energy savings equal to the expected standard for year 2015 and 2010 where revisions of the energy demands are anticipated.


Besides identification of building level energy use, also the energy use / losses in the energy supply system will be added here. This can e.g. be the efficiency of a gas furnace or it can be the heat losses in a district heating network including the production of district heating. Based on this, information can be identified e.g. for energy use and CO2 emission preferably di-vided into main types of energy consumption: 1. Residential buildings. 2. Commercial buildings. 3. Public buildings. And besides energy use for industry and transport sectors can also be added into a complete city level energy analysis. This can then be used as input to the Plan Energy tool for urban energy bal-ance calculation like we did for Piaseczno in Poland for the building groups 1-3 (see 7.6). The introduction of a useful holistic urban area monitoring tool can be a very valuable instrument in connection to obtaining aimed at CO2 emission reductions in practice at the same time also support-ing the EU-Thematic Strategy for the City environment. (KOM(2004)603) from 11th February 2004.


8. Results WP4 Training model development 8.1 EGCN basic training model European Green City approach to training – a working model Sustainable Urban Management approach: 1. Highlight the demonstration project as a way of improving the implementation of similar pro-

jects. 2. Monitor energy, environmental and economic effects into easy accessible results. 3. Provide information to citizens, companies, employees and managers within involved public and

private departments/companies, politicians. Awareness is the first crucial step towards participa-tion, learning, education, and training - which then produces capacity building and institutional strengthening for involved partners.

4. Involved citizens, politicians, city administration departments etc. will use experiences from the demonstration project to further adjust/develop objectives, strategies, action plans, actual pro-jects and guidelines for the actual project area - and thus improve sustainable urban manage-ment.

8.2 Drafted common training model Starting point for developing the training course model was the Green City concept of Sustainable Urban Management, which is linking demo projects to information/awareness rising/training as an integrated part of urban management processes regarding sustainable building promotion.


The main idea was that EGCN partners should contribute by focusing on different “key players” like: consultants, school children, politicians, builders, tenants - so that focus points are different in the training courses - though all at the same time contributing to the general developed model. We decided to carry out training in Belgium and Austria using the same basic model above de-scribed. And then we would re-consider for the following training courses. Maybe next step could be finding our way to help implementing this above figure 8.1 process in home town of key persons being trained? Let’s look at the training in Belgium (see 8.3): Conference and training course were planned and carried out very integrated – so what is training and what is conference outcome? Anyhow we have seen a number of most useful derived initiatives: 1. As an example of derived new initiative is that the solar industry organisation who gave a

speech at the conference, afterwards has initiated a new labelling system in Belgium for solar collectors with guarantied results minimum 80% of estimated energy effect.

2. Another derived initiative is that the Flemish organisation of all housing association after the

training course has established a new standard regarding new projects, so that housing associa-tions now are asked “why not using solar collectors?” if this is not suggested.

3. As a visible result of this and inspiration from conference/training 15 housing associations have

ongoing projects with solar collectors included. Before the conference only Zonnige Kempen had such projects.

4. Also a derived result is launching of a brochure from Zonnige Kempen illustrating a visit pro-

gramme to selected housing projects in the local area of Westerloo, so that visitors can visit the different projects and be informed each place by local tenants etc. See annex 3.2.

5. Amongst participants at conference/training were architect students. They were inspired to pre-

pare a follow-up workshop at the training centre Kamp C to work out proposal for bioclimatic buildings “Ecowonen”. This will be repeated with next years’ students again.

6. Province of Antwerp being co-financing the conference has now decided to arrange a follow-up

conference totally financed from the Province because of good results. Initiatives 1 and 2 are supporting the linking between urban management and demo projects in the way of pushing strategies and market development in direction of more sustainable housing pro-jects. Initiatives 3 and partly 5 are pushing implementation of more sustainable housing projects to dem-onstrate benefits (more demonstration projects).


Initiatives 4 and 6 are pushing awareness/inspiration by linking demo projects /monitoring results to information, capacity building etc. So what are the lessons learned regarding use of the Green City training model concept to more systematically help similar useful initiatives appear in connection to our training courses? At least we can see a relation between those good derived initiatives and targeted key persons being invited to training (and conference). Next after we can see that our focus on presenting monitored results helps provide credibility about achieved benefits from sustainable housing (not being a fashion trend something!) And thirdly we can see proved by initiative 6 that focus on political participation and urban man-agement process matches the spreading of interests within the region of Antwerp – and most impor-tant brings forward financial support for both training process and actual more sustainable housing being built. So what could be our developing contribution to the general basic model within EGCN project be-sides we like in previous projects can prove usefulness of this model? Development could maybe comprise recommendations, guidelines and practical tools for using this training model related to specific different target groups (?) Let’s look at the training in Austria (see 8.4): Target group is tenants in housing project “Stieglgründe” – and objective is to train in efficient use of air ventilation/heating systems. From the basic Green City training model in above figure 8.1 it is very directly using the linking from demo project (Stieglgründe) – to monitoring (tenants own accounts and meter readings) – to information/awareness/instruction/training. So here the linking to general training model is very clear – and the development of training model by recommendations, guidelines and practical tools seems ongoing very well: 1. Recommendations:

e.g. “although planners and housing company gave information material and introduction after opening most of the tenants didn’t know that there are two different control units for air ventila-tion and heating. Training course showed the difference.”

2. Guidelines: e.g. “a one page flyer about control units of air ventilation and heating systems will periodically be distributed among tenants.”

3. Practical tools: e.g. “offering tenants information about their account of heating costs for the first year including information about possibilities of saving costs”.


Our conclusion from analysing training in Belgium and Austria was: • Results from both courses are leading to recommendations, guidelines and practical tools for

specific actual target groups of key-persons regarding sustainable housing. • The basic training model and further developed recommendations, guidelines and practical tools

should same way be continued in training course 3 (Greece) and training course 4 (Italy) – as well as in the four training courses in NAS partner countries.

8.3 Training no 1 in Belgium Training start-up was prepared in close connection to the first EGCN conference in Westerlo, Bel-gium, so that 2 conference days were followed by 2 days of training workshops targeting builders, architects, technology suppliers and students from architect and engineering schools in the Antwerp region. Conference and training workshops were carried out in October 2002 in the new training centre “Camp C” in Westerlo, which was actually financed by Antwerp region as a result of EGCN partner Zonnige Kempen housing associations successful participation in the first “European Green Cities” EU Thermie project comprising implementation of 11 demonstration projects including one project in Houtvenne, Belgium. Houtvenne project and the Camp C building itself were amongst primary highlighted demo projects during the combined conference and training – and due to many housing association and building sector participants the main themes for training discussions became: how to support building sector and technology suppliers with knowledge and practical tools to implement more sustainable build-ing projects. Three workshops and site visits during a two days programme were developed to complement the two day conference on integrated solar technologies and energy efficient glazing in the building and housing sector. The training module should enable participants to bring the demonstrated technologies and best practices exhibited at the conference into own building and housing projects, and furthermore apply principles of sustainability for designing and developing housing projects. The workshops were open for professionals in the housing sector, architects, developers, urban planners and policy makers. Two of the three workshops aimed at practicians; one regarded the im-plementation of active solar energy in buildings, and the other regarded glazing or the passive use of solar energy. A third workshop was focusing on policy making in relation to solar energy. The workshops provided the participants with simple and practical tools to implement active and passive solar energy in housing projects – which actually initiated the fast growing market devel-opment in Belgium for solar. Growth rate 2003-2004 is 62% in Belgium compared to 26% in Po-land, 9% in Austria, 5% in Denmark and 4% in Germany.


During EGCN training also the schools were addressed: • To educate youth and schools an educational “promenade walk” has been developed in Her-

enthout, focusing on programmes for the 10 to 14 year olds. Drawing up the educational pro-grams was done in co-operation with the teacher training college “Van Roey-institute” in Vorse-laar. It has been tested out by classes of the 6th year of the primary school.

• Also for the Sint-Antoniusplein a programme for the 11 to 15 year olds has been elaborated and also a programme for the 16 to 18 year olds. This year 163 students were involved.

• For various Zonnige Kempen housing projects, school tours are being organized linked to ques-tionnaires about environmental and energy issues.

Similar has been made training activities for students: • Architects: last year of education there are workshops in Camp C training center with main

theme of bioclimatic design of buildings. • Engineers: master degree work on eco-buildings organized with universities. And finally EGCN training has also addressed tenants: • In cooperation with a developed “Dialogue” computer game an eco-building project was pre-

pared. In various meetings parts of it have been tested out, for example during preparation of Vorselaar housing project.

8.4 Training no 2 in Austria Starting point for the training in Austria was quite different to Belgium since we would like to try out other target groups of key players for sustainable building related to our basic Green City train-ing model. Therefore focus was on tenants – primarily in the “Stieglgründe” project buildings where many dif-ferent innovative technologies are implemented e.g. central biomass boiler, heat-recovery ventila-tion system and movable sun shading shutters. So this was a very directly use of tenants’ own home as demo project, where actual own monitoring on water, heat and electricity consumption were used to rise awareness – amongst others by offering the tenants assistance with evaluating energy accounts and energy bills to help optimising user behaviours. EGCN partner SIR had a “permanent” advisory consultancy service for the tenants over a period of two winter periods – and had carried out also an “opinion poll” to investigate effects on tenants’ behaviours. For the heating period 2002/2003 focus was on the tenants of housing blocks “Stieglgründe” to step-by-step initiate information/awareness and actual technical improvements of a bad functioning ventilation system in close cooperation with the involved housing project consultants.


A revised concept for further training activities were realized in heating period 2003/04. Main focus was then on a consolidation of the beginning self-organisation of dwellers. Ongoing projects were shown on homepage www.schlumpfhausen.info and weekly information afternoon each Friday (not only but also in dealings with energy). A functioning structure for self-organisation facilitated in-formation and discussion with dwellers. Monitoring results were presented on the homepage and also at tenant’s information evening in March / April. Finally a manual for dwellers was distributed in March 2004. Conclusions of tenants training at Stieglgründe: • All in all the model project “Stieglgründe” is more likely to show that the user's behaviour is

more than ever one of the most essential size of influence on the consumption of energy. The user defines the requirements to space air, intervenes in the systems engineering and determi-nates the warm water need.

• Despite extensive efforts in the model project “Stieglgründe” and the comprehensive involve-

ment of the residents we have noticed that there is still a big gap between consciousness and concrete behaviour.

• New heating and ventilation technologies particular in rent house buildings have to work per-

fectly and without luxurious service. The strategy of the social background that requires a be-havioural change of residents only works secondary and is not able to compensate bad technical hardware.

• A user-friendly engineering design is able to reduce negative user’s influences on the consump-

tion of energy. • The reports and surveys show that the classical window ventilation has been carried out in spite

of an installed supply and exhaust air system (“controlled living ventilation”) by most of the residents also during the winter season.

• Without acceptance of the users and their extensive renunciation of window ventilation during

the winter, the application of mechanical ventilation systems with heat recovery do not offer an efficient energy saving potential.

• A housing estate with united structures and an organized general public offers basically better

points of contact for interventions in the environmental field. Indeed, multipliers not only work in a desired direction. Their attendance and their contacts can overturn also in a negative mood by appearance of engineering problems.

• In the field of heating and airing we cannot speak of a typical consumer / user, contrariwise we

are confronted by very different "target groups". This means we have to find out target group-specific strategies also in the environmental communication. These strategies should be able to come along with ecology-or energy saving potentials of the end user / households.

• The possibilities of the social network of the housing estate “Stieglgründe” could be used even

better for measures of the deliberate contact with energy for the future. Starting points for more


energy efficiency in the housing estate could be a continuously energy consumption information (also on Internet) that makes cost developments transparent.

8.5 Training no 3 in Greece After evaluating on training in Belgium and Austria we found it most useful to continue training in Greece with focus on one more different target group: school children and their teachers, which would hopefully link also to parents. In this way we could also get to key players being the “end users” of buildings – namely the chil-dren’s parents besides maybe even more important the children themselves being future end users of buildings. Training was connected to a Greece national programme for environmental education in schools, where EGCN partner Demekav was involved to work out methods and registration schemes etc. for energy audits in school buildings. Demekav arranged the EGCN training as a combination of site visits to a few selected energy demo projects with workshop inspiration carried out in the Regional Energy Centre in Volos. This build-ing itself is a very good demo project on sustainable building issues e.g. natural building materials, use of day lighting, ventilation and insulation. The building is result of one renovation project of former Tsalapatas brick-works that was part of EU Thermie project “European Green Cities”. The program aimed to elicit the interest of pupils in energy saving matters and enter the dimension of energy economy in their everyday life. The school building was the main space of the pupil’s activity, as the place where they spend at least half of their daytime. Simple everyday tasks adopted by the pupils, may contribute greatly in the reduction of wasted energy in the huge school building complexes. Moreover the adoption of energy saving tasks by children may determine the behavior of the whole family at the pupil’s home. In general, the training program aimed at the formation of aspect and behavior of the future (active) citizens as regards the consumption of energy. In the case of students, the purposes of showing and explaining new technologies, materials and methods applied on buildings for energy saving reasons, are multiple: 1. Acquaintances with the new technologies generated to help human’s life. 2. Rise of pupil’s interest due to the power of example. 3. Better comprehension of the ways and methods of saving energy.


The objectives of the training program were: 1. Rising of the awareness of children on issues of energy saving. 2. Acquaintance of pupils with themes of energy saving. 3. Showing and explaining of cases of energy saving applications in local buildings. 4. On the spot visits for achieving a better uptake from the pupils The seminars were held in charge of the Regional Energy Centre and lasted two days per week. Explicitly, every Friday of each week, a school was hosted at the building of the Regional Energy Centre. The first day of the seminars was discerned in two phases: a) From 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. a lecture concerning sustainable energy issues in general (passive and energetic systems of solar energy, renewable energy sources etc.) and presented case studies of local buildings built on energy saving standards (“Tsalapatas” old Bricks Factory and Regional En-ergy Centre’s building). The material of these lectures, which include Power Point presentations and other documents, is shown on www.europeangreencities.com EGCN training schools. b) From 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. it was carried an excursion at the site of “Tsalapatas” old Bricks Factory in the area “Palia”. This old industrial building along with the Regional Energy Center’s building was renovated by using elements of bioclimatic architectural by Demekav (Volos Munici-pal Enterprise for Urban Studies and Development). The second day of the seminars (every Saturday of each week) it was devoted to excursions at the sites of the Small Hydro Power Plant (1MW) at the area “Sarakinos” and at the Biogas Power Plant (300 KW) that is situated at the ground of the Municipal Sewage Plant. These two alternative Power Plants were also planned in charge of the Regional Energy Center and Demekav. Because in target group of the educational program were schools of all levels of compulsory educa-tion (primary schools, high schools and lyceums), the exact content of the seminars and the mode of theme’s presentation were adjusted to the pupil’s level of education. According to the schedule, 33 schools have attended the seminars in a 10-month’s period (09/2003-06/2004) and 6 more schools in the period 09/2004-11/2004. A major effort has been made during the above period of time for the preparation and realization of the training seminars to school pupils. Additionally to 16 hours per week devoted to the carrying of the scheduled seminars considerable time was devoted in the preparation of the material to be pre-sented, discussions with school teachers and spot visits to school buildings for their checking of energy saving situation. It is important to mention that at the end of the school term Demekav, in collaboration with school-teachers, has participated in a school celebration concerning environment, where some material on energy saving technologies & applications has been presented. This school celebration comprised the end of a whole week filled with pupil’s actions on sensitizing citizens in environmental matters. Moreover, there has been an important study work carried out, comprising internet investigation on the latest advancements and interventions applied in the field of energy conservation and analytic study of the new Greek energy regulation for buildings. This study aimed at the construction of a recording form of building's energy situation, which has been an important work in which a serious


amount of time has been devoted. Currently, the construction of the recording forms has been ac-complished. In association with schools, the form has been filled at its basic level. In this phase Demekav estab-lished a network of communication in a periodic base, as each month was received elements of (monthly) energy consumptions in these schools. This feedback information is being registered so that at the end of the training program Demekav could announce the outcomes of the whole training program. Lessons learned from school training: 1. Pupils who have previously taken an environmental course are likely to be more interesting and

active in the training process. They also tend to understand quicker and better. 2. Long time and specialized lectures have a negative effect on the interest of children, regardless

their age, thus the training process has to be divided per thematic unit of gradually advanced spe-cialization.

3. Theoretical concepts should be explained with a practical paradigm. Concrete example helps to obtain comprehension and uptake.

4. Children show grater interest and uptake things better when they see, thus on the spot visits are necessary as a means of educating children with a more effective and entertaining way.

5. Teachers have assured as that children who have attended the training program tend to under-stand better and show more interest in their afterwards environmental courses.

Demekav’s conclusions derived from the training process are summarized as follows: • The participation of pupils in the attempt to obtain a more sustainable use of energy, requires,

before everything else, the cooperation between teachers, parents and the society (experts, poli-ticians, etc)

• Many schools which have attended the training program accepted to join in a survey for the en-ergy performance of the school buildings and have shown a notable will to undertake simple tasks of energy save in their buildings

• Accruing from the training program, a communication network between schools and Demekav has been developed, that lead in other cooperative activities afterwards

The positive outcomes of the training program have lead as to consider seriously its continuance and extension, in a manner that will generate more benefits for schools and the city as well. When the training course contacts with young children (primary school) it can be enriched with other activities like educative games, while when apply to elder pupils (high school and lyceum) can be combined with visits in significant urban sites in order to make the training process more interesting and appeal to pupils. The training program undertaken by Demekav targeted to schools was a good activity for rising awareness to young children, the future citizens and consumers of energy. Moreover, a network has been formed between schools and the Regional Energy Centre of Thessaly, which will keep on col-laborating within the next years with positive outcomes for both sides.


8.6 Training no 4 in Italy Following training experiences in Belgium and Austria EGCN partner Metec combined by focusing on builders and building technicians as one target group and tenants as another target group. This first target group could match very well ongoing project on Milano school gymnasia, where Metec assisted in 2002-2003 with design and installation of PV modules in connection to an estab-lished solar wall in cooperation with builder Solarwall Italia. The second target group could similar match another ongoing project comprising 20 apartments in the Vinovo building demonstration project, which was part of European Green Cities project “Green Solar Regions”. Here the builder ATC Torino was interested in training of tenants. The training of builders and building technicians was also used for preparing the EGCN conference in Torino by cooperating to Italian and foreign experts on ventilation systems. One of the very in-novative ventilation systems was actually the installation in Milano gymnasia buildings for two school centres of Cernusco sul Naviglio and Pioltello – and Metec used this demo project to diffuse innovative building technologies in Torino region. The two public school centres were object of maintenance actions in order to reduce heat loss and energy consumption and the energy retrofit projects interested the gymnasia of the two school centres. Solarwall Italia was very interested in developing and testing the hybrid PV-Solarwall system so, during the EGCN project period the system was installed and monitored. Metec assisted in 2002-2003 with design and technical consultancy for installation and monitoring. On the south facades of the gymnasia were installed air solar collector systems to preheat external air for space heating and ventilation. Internal air distribution was realised at the roof level by means of horizontal pipe systems provided with small holes. Air solar collectors are used with high temperature and low air delivery in order to provide heat to the internal spaces covering part of the heat demand for space heating. Exhaust air is extracted at the roof level by the existing openings. Solar energy was also used for electricity production by means of photovoltaic systems: electricity produced by the photovoltaic modules is discharged to the internal electric grid in order to reduce the electricity consumption measured on the general energy meter. In one school centre a hybrid photovoltaic/heating Solarwall system has been realised according to an innovative system already tested in Canada, and in the second one a traditional PV system was installed.

PV modules mounted on the solar wall collectors


An energy management system (EMS) controls the solar heating system identifying the best work-ing condition with reference to internal and external temperature. The PV system is also controlled by the EMS. The EMS also registers energy consumption data and monitors the energy saving re-sults. Thermal energy saving due to Solarwall system resulted about 25% in a year. Metec and Solarwall Italia carried out several training sessions in connection to building workshops and conferences having interests in the diffusion of these new ventilation technologies, e.g. in Euro-sun 2002 international conference, Solarexpo international conferences in 2003 and 2004 and Eco-efficiency workshop organised with Torino Environmental Park in May 2005. The Italian version of the Solarwall manual for use and application has been produced by Metec&Saggese and it was edited by Solarwall Italia in a CD-Rom. Copy of the manual is included in the EGCN web-site. The manual is obviously in Italian language. And the CD-Rom is being dis-tributed to architects, engineers, consultants, installers and also university students and professors during workshops, technical seminars and also in private meetings. Many applications of Solarwall type air solar collectors have been studied during the EGCN project period and 4 building applications have been realized only in the last year (2004). New applications for solar crop drying systems have been studied in Italy and 2 demonstration projects are in the de-sign phase. A 3 days conference and exhibition near Torino was organized in September 2004 with IDRO-CENTRO, a commercial company of energy technologies and building equipment. IDROCENTRO installed a Solar wall system on the south façade of its store-building and organized the confer-ence/exhibition in the site of the Solar wall installation. Solarwall Italia participated at the confer-ence and exhibition. Solarwall Italia marketing activity has been strongly developed during EGCN activities: more con-tacts and feasibility studies and more applications. New applications for solar crop drying systems is a very interesting opportunity for Solarwall Italia: Metec&Saggese is cooperating with Politec-nico of Torino (university) to establish optimal sizing of Solarwall air solar collector for crop drying systems and to realise a prototype. A new cooperation with the Italian research centre “Centro Research FIAT” has the aim to create a prototype for an integrated CHP and Solarwall system to be used in the building sector, especially focusing on the application in sporting and school centres. For the tenants training was prepared a manual inspired amongst others from the good Austrian results with tenants – and developed in close cooperation with ATC Torino who also followed pre-vious European Green Cities projects by Metec in Brescia and Abruzzo, where builders were local ATC sister companies. The technical manual with the instructions about the innovative technologies used in the Vinovo building demonstration project has been produced as part of the training activity. It consists in maintenance and operating manual for the technological systems addressed to tenants of the build-ings.


Contents: ventilation system, glazed conservatories on south façade, water solar collectors, central-ised heating system with heat meters for each apartment, rain water recycling for irrigation and toi-let washing, PV installation, EMS. See project description on www.europeangreencities.com demo projects Italy, Piemonte. The manual contains user’s instruction for the building management, consisting in a general part (emergency, supplying company, useful telephone numbers, insurance, to avoid damage, safety) and special information about the technological systems used in the building. Instructions are expressed in a simple way and are integrated with pictures. The manual has been produced by Metec&Saggese in connection with Politecnico of Torino and ATC Torino. Special training actions consisted in: • Workshop at ATC Torino office on 11/05/05: Maintenance responsible persons, designers,

technicians of ATC and tenants representatives participated to the presentation of the manual (15 participants). Comments and input were used to better define the manual’s contents.

• Visit to Vinovo building project site: Students of Politecnico of Torino visited the building site

and maintenance responsible persons and technicians of ATC visited the building together with Metec&Saggese. During the site visit the technological systems described in the manual were shown to the participants.

Great interest in Italy is to involve and train building maintenance responsible persons in order to obtain good results by the use and application of innovative building technologies. There have been many problems in the past with the maintenance and operation of building innovative technological systems especially as far as the technologies based on the use of renewable energy sources (solar systems). Now the producers propose assistance to their customers in order to guarantee an optimal operation of the technological systems and they are often responsible of the plant systems commis-sioning. During EGCN training activities Metec has clearly achieved awareness rising and changed behav-iours in both training aspects regarding ventilation systems and building maintenance responsible persons / tenants – but Metec also transferred inspiration from Austria regarding tenants training, from Belgium regarding methodological approach to the energy consultancy activities and from Denmark regarding Green Build tools.


8.7 Training no 5 in Lithuania Target groups for the training in Lithuania were dwelling house owners and city authority represen-tatives in Vilnius where EGCN partner NPC supervise houses regarding operation and maintenance work. Trainings were divided in two steps. One was held in December 2004, and another in January 2005. More than 60% of multi-flat houses are built 25 years ago, so more than 3600 dwellings are planned for renovation over next 15 years with an estimated 50% energy saving potential. That’s why it is very important to stimulate people to be more active in renovation process – and first step is the process of dwelling owners organizing in “Home Owners Associations” (HOAs). So therefore main objective of EGCN training was to raise awareness regarding energy efficiency and energy building technologies – as the motivation for dwelling owners to become organized in such owners associations is the economic potential for energy savings as part of ownership com-mitments to properly renovate and maintain their buildings. The main task was to initiate improvements in residential energy efficiency and to promote rehabilitation of multi-flat houses by explaining inhabitants the reasons of inefficient energy usage in multi-flat houses nowadays and showing already implemented successful examples in Lithuania and in other countries, as well as the explanation of inhabitants’ opportunities in case they are willing to improve situation in their dwelling houses. The “key players” of the trainings focused on the urban management processes regarding sustainable building promotion. Participants of the NPC trainings were representatives of Vilnius Municipality, heads of HOAs, consultants from dwelling house consulting agencies, workers of building rehabilitation enterprises. The main target groups were inhabitants of the NPC supervised houses, which mostly have poor technical conditions and for which energy performance passports were made. NPC experts have made analysis of condition of the construction elements and have chosen 8 houses, which are of very poor technical conditions. After analysis of state of the walls, stairs and corridors, roofs, win-dows, balconies and cellars, heating, hot water and electricity systems, lifts and the surrounding areas the main results for each component were characterized with “4” – good, “3”- satisfactory, “2” – bad and “1” – particularly bad conditions. The dwellers of these 8 houses were not organized in HOAs, and these houses are supervised by NPC. That is why these inhabitants were chosen for training seminars as a target group, in order to organize them for decision-making concerning renovation of these houses.


Information about needs of renovation in the houses was prepared by NPC experts:

Condition of the constructual elements / requirements of renovation Address Walls

Stairs and cori-dors

Roof

Windows and balcon’s doors

Cellar

Heating system

Heat and water distri-bution system

Electri-cial system

Lifts Terito-ry

Gerosios Vilties 16

2 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 - 2

Savanorių 65 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 - 3

Skroblų 15 3 2 2 3 3 2 2 1 - 3

Skroblų 29 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 3 - 3

Erfurto 24 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 - 1

Subačiaus 45A 3 3 2 3 3 - 3 3 - 3

Polocko 1 2 2 2 3 2 - 2 2 - 2

Polocko 6 2 2 2 3 2 - 2 2 - 3

4 – “good”, 3 – “satisfactory”, 2 – “bad”, 1 – “particularly bad” At the beginning of the training courses, the energy concept in multi-flat houses was explained. The main questions for raising inhabitants’ consciousness were: • What is energy? • Energy production resources. • Heat and electricity demands. • What are heat losses, their reason? NPC consultants described the multi-flat house situation in Lithuania nowadays, as well as the main reasons of the bad situation in Lithuania concerning efficient energy usage in dwelling houses. The main reason of bad situation in dwelling sector is the influence of the past, i.e. Soviet Union period, on the mentality of inhabitants. Realizing this reason is the first step in renovation and moderniza-tion process. Next discussion was initiated by the representatives of house renovation program coordinators – Vilnius Municipality, Vilnius District heat network company and Vilniaus Energija Ltd. They showed real and possible solutions to change multi-house situation. It was explained inhabitants, that energy audits and investments projects are the first and obligatory steps among the main tools for building renovation. NPC consultants also stressed the issues of the EGCN project successful experience: • Insulate walls, roof, floor; • Change windows; • Renovate boiler houses; • Implement heating regulation system; • Use secondary heat in ventilation system. NPC together with Lithuanian consulting agencies shared the succeeded examples of already im-plemented projects in Lithuania and other countries. Again the experience and ideas of EGCN in


inspiration of energy efficiency implementation projects through the successful stories, ecological housing projects were stressed and EGCN demo projects were described. Some "success stories" of implemented Energy Efficiency Housing Pilot Projects in Lithuania were explained, based on such questions as: • How the building was modernized? • What was the final price? • What was the price for inhabitants (Lt/m2)? • The main results (energy savings, opinion of inhabitants, pay-back time). With the help and assistance of Vilnius municipality’s and Ministry of Environment’s representa-tives, existing opportunities for inhabitants in renovation process were described. Nowadays, Lithuanian strategy for dwelling houses and Lithuanian program of dwelling house modernization and financing are the basic documents for multi-flat house renovation process. The most important point was to explain people as simply as possible the main steps of house reno-vation, in order to avoid their fear of starting this long unclear process. The main steps of dwelling-house renovation are: • Establish homeowner’s association; • Calculations (energy audits, investment projects); • Procedure of getting bank/fund loans; • Renovation of the building; • Monitoring the results. NPC consultants represented the existing dwelling houses renovation program, which is taking place in Vilnius nowadays. The special fund for dwelling house inhabitants was created in order to help people in house renovation process. Energy audit and investments project of the multi-flat house can be made for free for those HOAs, which decided to renovate the accommodation. During NPC training courses the process of using such opportunities was described. The expected results of the calculations were explained to the inhabitants. NPC designed brochure was distributed to inhabitants of the houses that are supervised by NPC. This brochure is a good and simple information source about potential energy savings in the multi-flat houses and motivation for the tenants to establish HOAs as the first step towards their own building renovation. Examples of successful renovation stories in Lithuania and abroad complete the material. There is information about energy losses’ causes, the means to reduce them, and there is also ex-plained: what are energy audits, investments projects and energy metering. The main goal of issuing this brochure is to motivate and to get inhabitants acquainted with their opportunities to make their own houses more energy efficient and to use currently suggested financial possibilities in Vilnius. Energy performance passport (EPP) of buildings is an important instrument to reach energy effi-ciency. NPC had tested chosen 8 houses, supervised them, and finally prepared the Energy Performance Passport for houses in a purpose for internal information use, as well as external aims of renovation process.


In chosen 8 houses a large potential exists for energy efficiency improvement. To overcome the main barriers, changes in people mentality and their awareness need to be developed. Energy per-formance passport of buildings is an important instrument that should be part of renovation process. These measures are therefore addressed in EU energy efficiency legislation. Energy performance passports can be defined as follows: The energy performance of a building is the total energy efficiency of a building, reflected in nu-meric indicators, which have been calculated, taking into account insulation, installation character-istics, design and positioning, own energy generation and other factors that influence the net energy demand. Furthermore, the energy performance passport of a building is an NPC internally used document, in which the result of calculation of the energy performance of a building is presented. In January 2004 Lithuanian Government approved Lithuanian Housing Strategy. Strategy lays down objectives important to each individual of our society: to ensure broader housing choices to all social groups, to rationally use the existing housing stock and energy resources necessary for its adequate maintenance and renovation, to improve capacity of housing entities to participate in ac-tivities of the housing market and management. Results of this training was most visible as in all 8 selected houses for NPC trainings there were groups of active people, which were interested in their house renovation and HOAs. Two of eight houses now prepared documents for establishing HOAs. When home owner association is estab-lished the decision of house renovation will be following step. Other houses under supervision of NPC got similar EGCN information about possibilities for house renovation in Vilnius. Three of such houses already had meetings of inhabitants, where decision to renovate the houses were made. The renovation process in these houses is planned to be finished after one year. 8.8 Training no 6 in Poland In the framework of EGCN Project NECA in co-operation with local authorities of Piaseczno city prepared special training session “Energy efficiency in buildings”. The main idea of the training was to increase the interest of different groups of people in energy savings matters in the building they lived in, or being responsible for. Besides this targeted training session in Piaseczno - EGCN partner NECA did combine several re-gional information meetings in Poland with EGCN dissemination and training for awareness rising in connected national project work for information about the Thermo Modernisation Act. The Thermo Modernisation Act and new Energy Performance Building Directive created a space for a new activity related to increasing the energy efficiency in housing sector. NECA experience shows, that very often the lack of necessary knowledge is only one reason that different measure-ments were not undertaken by housing owners or managers. New technologies often seem very strange for the people, who are not familiar with the buildings techniques and technologies. Our main target group are building managers, developers, and housing owners. It is a group of pro-fessionals, which using Thermomodernisation Act could relatively easy possess money for the in-


vestment based on renewable fuels. This Act states, that if the investor replace the non-renewable source with renewable one, the Bank of National Economy (state owned) pay 25% of the credit taken by the investor for modernisation. If we really want to speed up the “renewable” market we have to turn to the group of people, which have possibility to overcome the barrier of still relatively high prices of installation based on renewable fuels. In co-operation with Ministry of Infrastructure NECA and other partners started country-wide edu-cational-information campaign called ”Dom przyjazny - Mądry Polak przed budową" (“Friendly house" - "Wise Pole before the construction").

A set of brochures about the energy efficient housing was made by NECA and distributed. The first one "Thermo modernisation of Buildings” (including renewable energy implementation) has been developed and printed in 115 000 copies that are distributed among the Housing Associa-tions, Housing Co-operatives and Building Managers. In the brochure the users could find the information about: • The measurements, which could be taken to reduce the energy consumption, • Most efficient technologies, • How to use renewable energy (solar collectors, biomass, and heat pumps), • What is energy audit, • Where to find the financial support, • Where to look after the technical or legal assistance The other brochure has title "Energy-efficient house” with the chapter "How to use the free-solar energy?" and has been printed in 130 000 copies. NECA and other company experts in different regions of Poland provided the set of workshops in regions of Rzeszow, Kielce, Bialystok Gorzow Wlk, Warsaw, Lodz and Kutno. In each of them participated about 150-200 people. The programme covered such topics similar to the content of the brochure (which was distributed during the meeting): • How to diminish the energy costs in buildings? • What are the heating costs with application of different energy sources? • Modern RES technologies, best practices and examples, • Where to apply for a credit? • Where to look for a technical support? The RES technologies presented on the meetings were solar collectors, heat recovery ventilation systems with PV application, heat pumps and biomass boilers.


The special EGCN training program for Piaseczno covered such topics as: • Available technologies – Polish technologies versus BAT? • Economy efficiency of the investment – what and where could be applied? • Profits versus risk • Positive examples – Poland and EU • How much should it cost and where to look for a money? From the present situation on housing sector in the Piaseczno City the most important is introduc-tion of mechanical ventilation with heat recovery and solar panels for hot water preparation. The training session should give results in: • Increase of knowledge about ways of increase energy efficiency at housing • Rise of people interest in new energy saving investments The training session was held in conference room in City Hall of Piaseczno in February 2005. The best professionals representing two companies having practical experience in renewable energy were invited: • Masa-Therm - a Swiss-Polish company dealing mainly with energy efficiency in housing, hav-

ing their own solutions in building insulation and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery • Polska Ekologia - a Polish company dealing mainly with solar energy and heat pumps. The training workshop aimed to increase public awareness about the energy efficiency at housing sectors, as well as individual households. The energy prices increased very much during last years in Poland, and people started to look after solutions, which allow them to reduce the energy bills, and increase internal comfort of their apartments. In general the training program aimed at the information about existing solutions, which could be easily adopted in existing houses – i.e. solutions that have already been successfully implemented in Polish housing with monitored effects to prove feasibility. Ventilation is the main problem in the most of the houses built before 1990 (95% of the sector). During the 90’s the people started to replace the old, not-tight windows with new ones, but often forgetting about the ventilation. Solar energy is most popular in Poland now, but there is lack of knowledge about possibility for implementation in multifamily houses. The purpose of the training was not only transferring of technical information, but presentation of existing installation, together with costs and achieved effects. So each presentation was divided into two parts: • First – presentation of the technology, basic parameters, possible application. • Second – presentation of existing installation together with energy and financial effectiveness,

as well as practical advice. The main idea of the training was to demonstrate that almost 50% of energy is thermal energy, and that up to 90% of that energy may be obtained from renewable sources at low cost. All solutions presented during the training are backed by the long term experience and have achieved practical results.


All solution offer high economic return, but at the same time they assure high quality of the indoor environment and global environmental protection. Thanks to this, the systems described for solar heating and innovative ventilation, are recommended not only by architects, but also by medical doctors and ecologists in Poland. All participants received printed materials: brochures about thermomodernisation and solar energy, book written by Mr. Rylewski “Personal energy – modern solution of low energy buildings” (avail-able on EGCN website training), and poster which could be hanging in the common area of the houses. Site visit in private house equipped with solar collectors for hot water preparation and heat pump was an interesting supplement to the given lectures. All participants found the training workshop very interesting, and the lectors possessed very high notes in evaluation questionnaires, filled up by all participants and the end of the training. Most of them stress the usefulness of the training and suggested, that similar meeting should be repeated at least two times a year. The regional seminars, brochures printing in thousand of copies, and training have very positive impact on the people. During last two years Buildings’ thermomodernisation increased the scale about 100%. It is assumed that in 2004/2005 will be modernised so many building as it was in the period 1999-2003. Unfortunately we still have a big financial barrier that slows down the market and peoples initia-tives. We believe that EkoFund new fund will speed up the building renovation and solar panels market much more within the next two years. Based on the experience from workshop done in Piaseczno school in co-operation with the Founda-tion of Ecology Education, see web-site www.nape.pl / PROGRAM DLA SZKÓL /www.gimnazjum.nape.pl. “Save energy and water – protect the environment”, NECA developed a competition for schools – both teachers and schoolchildren called “People – energy –environment”. Special materials for teachers were developed presenting all aspects of energy use – from the source up to the end use. The teachers take part in five days course – two days are lecture about “technical aspects”, next three days are the workshop. During that time they prepare program of the school lessons, which later they will have in their schools. They will be also oblige to register energy used at school and together with children prepare a “reparation” programme, which allow not only reduc-ing energy consumption, but also reducing the environment impact. On the web-site they can find the “game” which allows them easy to calculate both – energy and environment results of their behaviour. All schools in Poland (over 20 000) were informed by post about the website, and up to the moment almost all of them visited it. From the training of schoolchildren in Greece NECA will transfer experience to Poland for further developing training of schools.


8.9 Training no 7 in Czech Republic City authority technicians and politicians were chosen for the targeted EGCN training in Czech Re-public – still based on same drafted common training model after the training in Belgium and Aus-tria. And EGCN partner Ventos prepared some of the firstly developed information and training materials to be translated into Czech language e.g. the DCBA checklist from Belgium. Training was carried out through 3 sessions – “road show” information meetings in the Bohemian region, northern part of Czech Republic around Decin city during June-July 2004 followed by a workshop session in October 2004 and a last workshop training session after the EGCN conference in Decin in June 2005. Feedback from first two training sessions appreciated the very useful training and the opportunity of immediate discussion with experts. Mayors of cities of Mikulášovice, Vilémov and Lipová would like to meet like this every quarter year and discuss opportunities for solving current problems in their cities. And Mayors of cities of Mikulášovice, Vilémov and Lipová and the General Secretary of Rumburk found very good reasons for monitoring energy efficiency needs of municipalities in the region. This last training session was also very well accepted by the attendees, who left with very practical information on what energy savings can be used in actual buildings in their field of responsibility. New technology – a very efficient heat recovery unit developed in a cooperation between Danish EGCN partner Cenergia and technology producer EcoVent - was presented and attendees agreed with Ventos to put this unit to selected house and to monitor its efficiency in real-life installation. We expect these measurements, if successful, to be a basis for future spread of the unit. Between first and last training sessions Ventos carried out energy audits on two selected public buildings of participating municipalities. After presentation of results both directors of audited buildings claimed to perform suggested energy saving improvements in next fiscal year, now hav-ing the budget in 2005 already allocated to other activities. Besides this several municipalities started to use the DCBA checklist for public buildings recon-structions. It has yet to be evaluated, what will be the long term impact of using the list, but already some first results can be seen, e.g. architects must explain, why they don’t use some natural build-ing materials etc. During training session Ventos also demonstrated some of their own implemented building installa-tions – e.g. solar collectors and heat pumps, which are among the first eco building projects being implemented in this northern region of the Czech Republic.


8.10 Training no 8 in Hungary In Hungary EGCN partner EMI used preparation for conference in Budapest as a starting point for training targeting city authority representatives, builders and architects/engineers in selected dis-tricts of Budapest – with a primary aim of pushing forward the much needed urban renewal process in direction of sustainability solutions. The EGCN conference, workshops, and site visits in April 2004 resulted in a big interest from the districts Ujpest, Ferencváros and Jósefváros. This was used in connection with a follow-up prepara-tory training workshop in April 2005 with participation also from Project Coordinator Green City Denmark. Suggestions regarding the main focus of the training was summarized to be: energy consumption on building and city level, application of renewable energy sources (solar and PV) in building and in energy plant, looking for possibilities of biomass and biogas plants in districts of periphery to Bu-dapest, local CHP for blocks based on natural gas as demonstration projects and advanced district heating systems for creating a new better image and actual improved efficiency. Then a main training session was carried out in June 2005 where several demonstration projects and practical training tools developed by EGCN partners were taken into use e.g. biomass projects and Ecological Point System from Austria, large scale PV solar plants and Green City manual for Sus-tainable Building from Denmark, small scale cogeneration plants and “pathway for schoolchildren” from Belgium, PV assisted ventilation from Italy and the first solar project in hospital from Poland. The first issue was about the sustainable indicators. ÉMI was involved in the Thematic Network ”CRISP” (Construction and City related sustainable indicators), and in the line of the Network gen-eral outcome a Hungarian database was established and managed by ÉMI. From the presentation the main principles were tackled and examples were introduced. Besides the Hungarian presentation EMI also made an English version – both are available on the EGCN website. The next item was to go through EMI adapted training manual based on the Green City Denmark manual for sustainable building that has been extended with some examples of best practice and the Hungarian present situation. A great interest was experienced on the city level issues, as it is a field that has started to become interesting for local municipalities. There was detailed explanation of the Local Green Planning opportunity initiated during the different phases of the manual. One of the focus areas of the manual was the energy issues including typical heat consumption, renewable energy sources, CO2 emissions, heat loss via filtration/ventilation. The presentation was held by PhD Tamás Csoknyai, from TU Budapest, and gives a proper overview about the up to date situation and issues in Hungary. As he and Mr. Osztruloczky are involved a EU 5 Framework pro-gram SOLANOVA- which is an energy conscious retrofitting of a ten storey concrete panel bloc – a detailed presentation was held as best practice on the ongoing building and monitoring process. Following the presentation some Best Practice examples were presented. Mrs. Mónika Tornóczky (VELUX Hungary) presented interesting examples on new roof top apartments from St. Petersburg, Denmark and Újpest.


From Újpest side, the existing “swolow house” with its DHW system and the future DEMOHOUSE demonstration project was presented. There was attention to some Belgian and Austrian projects on solar and biomass application using the EGCN website, and the new challenges of biogas plants on Danish and Austrian examples were presented. As a Hungarian initiative, Mr. Péter Medgyasszay, an architect and the leader of Independent Environmental Centre in Hungary, presented the auto-nomic housing modell.

There was discussion on the presented topics, and special attention was made for the better image of District Heating. This is a theme in Hungary, which is very alive. As regarding the high individual subsidy of gas price (0,22 Euro/m3) for residential use, district heating lost its competitiveness and it is hard to sell a dwelling with district heating use. The representative of FŐTÁV, one of the big-gest district heating supplier pointed out, that the company sacrificed a lot of using cogeneration, renewables and waste heat energy from industry, which helps in cleaner environment. It was agreed, that the subsidy system should be changed more in the direction of real values. Visible results from raised awareness can be seen from all the 3 mentioned Budapest districts, which one of them started European Green Cities project participation in a new project (Újpest) and the other two districts are planning foreign visiting programme to urban renewal projects in Copen-hagen together with EMI and the Danish EGCN partners. The EGCN Conference in Budapest 2004 was a good starting point to build new strategies for the local governments, however without adequate subsidy system and real gas price the initiatives has weak background for financial realistic payback time. For future training EMI find that the success with the children education on sustainability in Bel-gium, Greece and Poland could give also good opportunity to establish similar initiative in Hungary as well.


8.11 Final model for EGCN training on Sustainable Urban Housing Energy Same training model concept but different aiming at specific target groups The developed training model is a result of separate training courses for specific selected different target groups of key players in the mentioned 8 partner countries: • Belgium: Builders, architects, technology suppliers, engineer & architect students. • Austria: tenants and building caretakers. • Greece: school buildings, teachers, school children and parents. • Italy: tenants and building owners – architects, engineers, technicians – housing associations,

building managers. • Lithuania: dwelling owners and city authority representatives. • Hungary: city authority representatives, builders and architects/engineers. • Poland: city authority representatives, school children, tenants and building managers. • Czech Republic: city authority technicians and politicians. The EGCN Training Tools for sustainable urban housing are targeting key players for sustainable urban housing: • City authority departments and politicians being responsible of urban development, energy

supply and building approvals etc. • Builders, Housing Associations, architects, engineers, technicians etc. implementing building

projects • Building owners, tenants, building maintenance managers, students, schools, institutions

etc. representing end users • Technology manufacturers, technology suppliers, consultants etc. The EGCN training model consists of: • Recommendations • Guidelines • Practical tools to support implementing the process of Sustainable Urban Housing Management in home town of key players being trained. City authority departments and politicians • Prezentace pro obce v Ústeckém (Czech Republic) • DCBA checklist (Czech Republic) • Public buildings energy audits (Czech Republic) • Green Global 21 (Denmark) • Notat om energikvalitetskontrol i boligbyggeri (Denmark) • Notat om Solbørs og Solcellelaug i København (Denmark). • Presentation about sustainable indicators derived from CRISP projects (Hungary) • Adapted Manual and Guidelines for Environmental management in Hosing Projects (Hungary) • Energy consumption in buildings – introduction (Hungary) • District heating: for and against (Hungary) • Prezentacje z seminarium w Piasecznie (Poland)


Builders, Housing Associations • Public buildings energy audits (Czech Republic) • Green Catalogue (Denmark etc.) • Grøn Værktøjskasse for økologisk bæredygtig byfornyelse (Denmark) • Notater om energikvalitetskontrol i boligbyggeri (Denmark) • Notat om Dalgasparken, ”Bygherrer for Bæredygtighed” boligprojekt (Denmark) • Roof top apartment – a Velux presentation (Hungary) • Adapted Manual and Guidelines for Environmental management in Hosing Projects (Hungary) • “Edificio bioclimatico in Vinovo – 20 appartamenti - Manuale d’uso e manutenzione per

l’utenza” - Manual for tenants to operate low-energy and eco-building (Italy) Architects, engineers, technicians • DCBA checklist (Belgium) • DCBA checklist (Czech Republic) • Public buildings energy audits (Czech Republic) • Manual and Guidelines for Sustainable Housing Projects (Denmark) • Grøn Værktøjskasse for økologisk bæredygtig byfornyelse (Denmark) • Notater om energikvalitetskontrol i boligbyggeri (Denmark) • Notat om Dalgasparken, ”Bygherrer for Bæredygtighed” boligprojekt (Denmark) • Presentation about sustainable indicators derived from CRISP projects (Hungary) • Energy consumption in buildings – an introduction (Hungary) • District heating: for and against (Hungary) • Roof top apartment – a Velux presentation (Hungary) • “Solarwall – Guida alla progettazione” - Manual and Guidelines for Solarwall type air solar col-

lectors and building ventilation systems (Italy) • www.domprzyjazny.pl – all web-site about buildings thermomodernisation, renovation imple-

mentation of renewable energy + brochures in pdf (Poland) • “Personal Energy” (“Energia własna”) – universal book for architects, building managers and

users (Poland) • Series of brochures about buildings thermomodernisation, with introduction of solar techniques

(Poland). • Book titled “How to reduce heating costs” (“Jak zmniejszyć koszty ogrzewania”) (Poland) Building owners, tenants, building maintenance managers • Manual for tenants to operate heating and ventilation systems etc. (Austria) • User’s handbook for your building - “Stiegl”-property (Austria) • Checklist Summer/Winter – Stieglgründe (Austria) • Presentation about sustainable indicators derived from CRISP projects (Hungary) • Adapted Manual and Guidelines for Environmental management in Hosing Projects (Hungary) • Energy consumption in buildings – an introduction (Hungary) • Brochure for tenants “Save energy, heat and money” (Lithuania) • Questionnaire for tenants about energy savings in dwelling houses issues (Lithuania) • “Energy passport” of potential houses to be renovated (Lithuania) • Training courses for tenants (Lithuania)


• “Edificio bioclimatico in Vinovo – 20 appartamenti - Manuale d’uso e manutenzione per l’utenza” - Manual for tenants to operate low-energy and eco-building (Italy)

• www.domprzyjazny.pl – all web-site about buildings thermomodernisation, renovation imple-mentation of renewable energy + brochures in pdf (Poland)

• “Personal Energy” (“Energia własna”) – universal book for architects, building managers and users (Poland)

• Series of brochures about buildings thermomodernisation, with introduction of solar techniques (Poland).

• Book titled “How to reduce heating costs” (“Jak zmniejszyć koszty ogrzewania”) (Poland) • Benutzungsanleitung für ihr Gebäude – allgemeiner Teil (Österreich) • Benutzungsanleitung für ihr Gebäude – Stieglgründe (Österreich) • Checkliste Sommer / Winter - Stieglgründe (Österreich) Students • DCBA checklist (Belgium) • Energy consumption in buildings – an introduction (Hungary) • Presentation about sustainable indicators derived from CRISP projects (Hungary) • Roof top apartment – a Velux presentation (Hungary) • “Edificio bioclimatico in Vinovo – 20 appartamenti - Manuale d’uso e manutenzione per

l’utenza” - Manual for tenants to operate low-energy and eco-building (Italy) • “Personal Energy” (“Energia własna”) – universal book for architects, building managers and

users (Poland) • Series of brochures about buildings thermomodernisation, with introduction of solar techniques

(Poland). • Book titled “How to reduce heating costs” (“Jak zmniejszyć koszty ogrzewania”) (Poland) Schools • Manual for training of school children and teachers/parents (Greece) • «Εξοικονόµηση Ενέργειας στο Σχολείο» - Energy save in schools (Greece) • «Εξοικονόµηση Ενέργειας στο σπίτι» - Energy save at home (Greece) • «Ηλιακή Ενέργεια» - Solar Energy (Greece) • «Παρεµβάσεις Εξοικονόµησης Ενέργειες στο Συγκρότηµα Τσαλαπάτα» - Tsalapatas Energy

Save Applications (Greece) • Manual “People-Energy-Environment” for training of school children and teachers (“Podręcznik

Człowiek-Energia-Środowisko) supplemented by the web-site “People-Energy-Environment” (Poland)

Technology manufacturers, technology suppliers, consultants • Green Catalogue (Denmark etc.) • Introduction to building integrated heat recovery ventilation (Denmark) • Presentation about sustainable indicators derived from CRISP projects (Hungary) • District heating: for and against (Hungary) • Roof top apartment – a Velux presentation (Hungary)


• “Solarwall – Guida alla progettazione” - Manual and Guidelines for Solarwall type air solar col-lectors and building ventilation systems (Italy))

• “Personal Energy” (“Energia własna”) – universal book for architects, building managers and users (Poland)

• Series of brochures about buildings thermomodernisation, with introduction of solar techniques (Poland).

• Book titled “How to reduce heating costs” (“Jak zmniejszyć koszty ogrzewania”) (Poland)


9. Results WP1-WP2-WP3-WP4 Technology & Market development 9.1 Building integrated solar and efficient use of glazing The main interest for EGCN partners in this technology area was to utilize the rapid development in Austria for promoting solar energy use in other EGCN partner countries. A project group was estab-lished with SIR, Austria, - Zonnige Kempen, Belgium – and later on NECA, Poland. The starting point was the Belgian market as we prepared the first EGCN conference in Kempen to focus on solar energy and efficient use of glazing. The installed amount of solar energy in Belgium was yearly not more than the installed amount during one week in the Salzburg region, Austria. During conference preparation and the two conference days we noticed kind of “critical mass” ef-fect and a concentration of interests for use of solar energy. Most clearly it was shown from the Belgian solar association who afterwards initiated a new labelling system in Belgium for solar col-lectors - and from the Flemish organisation of housing associations who afterwards established guidelines for incorporating solar in housing association projects. But also for the Austrian market development the EGCN project has contributed by focusing also on the Green Build monitoring tools regarding financial support. EGCN partners were much inspired from Austrian “Energy Point System” and discussed possible integrating with other sustainability indicators like provided from Danish EGCN partner Cenergia in “Green Global 21” point system. This led to SIR contributions in developing the “Ecological Point System” as a next generation of financial support criteria system for sustainable housing in Salzburg region. Another clearly effect has been seen on the Polish market, where EGCN partner NECA during 2002-2003 implemented the first Polish solar installation on public buildings – on a hospital in Rawicz – as part of a European Green Cities’ project. During EGCN project dissemination work and training NECA has inspired more hospitals to do the same financed from own money, e.g. the Army hospital in Warsaw. EU solar statistics from ESTIF shows following results for the EGCN partner countries: EGCN Installed

kW 2002 Installed kW 2003

Installed kW 2004

Growth 2003-2004

In operation 2004 (kW)

Forecast 2005 (kW)

Austria 107.135 116.844 127.816 9% 1.459.842 140.000Belgium 3.460 6.333 10.290 62% 33.774 12.600Czech Rep 4.200 4.900 5.950 21% 30.380 7.000Denmark 9.100 13.300 14.000 5% 221.011 15.400Greece 106.400 112.700 150.500 34% 1.978.690 119.000Hungary 350 700 1.050 50% 2.975 1.050Italy 31.500 35.000 40.600 16% 311.000 49.000Lithuania 210 280 350 25% 1.155 420Poland 12.600 18.354 23.100 26% 71.764 24.500


As shown below from our Austrian EGCN partner SIR the market for solar was highly developed before 2002 – but for Belgium it is a clearly effect of EGCN conference and training activities that market developed very fast. Also for Poland EGCN dissemination activities from NECA has contributed very well. 9.1.1 Use of solar energy / building integrated solar systems From EGCN partners is below given short evaluation of national market development. Austria Salzburg region had breathtaking development of square meters thermal solar collectors installed in housing sector within the last years. Main reason can be found in existing subsidies for new build houses (and renovation). Almost 2/3 of all new built square meters in houses are supplied by solar energy. Picture: Development of solar collector systems (in % of total m²)

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In total there are more than 120.000 m² solar collector area installed in region of Salzburg. In 2001 Salzburg had the highest increase in Austria, this development means best-practice- standard in Austria.


Picture: Installed solar collector area 2001 in Austria

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Legend: S Salzburg, V Vorarlberg, O Oberösterreich, K Kärnten, N Niederösterreich B Burgenland, T Tirol, St Steiermark, W Wien Besides this enormous market growth it is necessary to have an immanent incentive for a better quality. Binding declarations for criteria have been worked out. Monitoring of solar gains and guar-anteed minimum solar gains are requested. In general solar energy is used for heating purposes as well as for hot water production. Important question is how to minimize investment costs and heat losses. Often 2-pipe system is installed, with heat exchanger in each flat for hot water production. Besides housing sector buildings of tourism (hotel, restaurants) are another important target group for using solar energy. Trends for building wellness areas mean high consumption of hot water, even during summer period. There is also an existing system for subsidies (30% of investment costs). Belgium As an example of derived new initiative is that the solar industry organisation, that gave a speech at the EGCN conference in Westerlo near Antwerp , afterwards has initiated a new labelling system in Belgium for solar collectors with guarantied results minimum 80% of estimated energy effect. Support from the conference on solar energy in co-operation with the engineers’ association KVIV initiated a national dissemination to enable technicians to acquire additional know-how. It should be noted as well that within Flanders some financial benefits are now being developed, such as granting subsidies for uses of solar collectors.


Another derived initiative is that the Flemish organisation of all housing associations after the con-ference has established a new standard regarding new projects, so that housing associations now are asked “why not using solar collectors?” if this is not suggested. As a visible result of this and inspiration from conference is that many housing associations have projects ongoing with solar collectors included. Before the conference only Zonnige Kempen had such projects. Czech Republic Solar energy is used for heating utility water and pool water. As for the relatively low solar activity and cloudy weather during the winters in the region, solar energy is not used for heating purposes. Growth of interest in the solar systems can be observed, as information about successful installa-tions and technologies itself spread to the communal sphere. This naturally leads to more installa-tions at municipal level. Thanks to the successful dissemination of information to the municipalities in the region, school in municipality of Mimoň built solar panels for utility water heating and hospital in Roudnice nad La-bem plans the same. Also 4 family houses were equipped with solar panels by Ventos. Denmark Another contribution has been EGCN partner Cenergia’s very active work for the initiative “Solar City Copenhagen”. Also EGCN partner Green City Denmark participated in the statutory general meeting where the Solar City Copenhagen society was legally established with Copenhagen Mu-nicipality and Danish Energy Authority amongst primary partners. Cenergia was selected member of the Executive Committee. The main objective is to work for Copenhagen being international pioneer in implementing solar installations and energy optimised buildings. (See also: www.solarcitycopenhagen.com). Peder Vejsig Pedersen from Cenergia as part of this worked with many partners to also establish the “Copenhagen Solar Cell Stock exchange” – amongst them primarily the involved Danish EGCN expert Mr. Erik Christiansen, Ebo Consult, who became chairman of the solar all stock exchange. He is also former chairman of EHEN network through 8 years. Greece In Greece there is a good percentage of solar energy exploitation mainly with the installation of solar water heaters as a house solution for hot water use. Additionally in many islands it is common for hotel units to cover a big part of their energy needs by using integrated solar systems. DEMEKAV is now planning the installation of advanced solar energy integrated systems on some public buildings of the Municipality of Volos.


Hungary Although the solar energy/building integrated solar systems are not unknown in Hungary, and in the Government Energy Decree 1107/1999 a certain subsidy system was settled, and an aim of 20 000 units/10 year program was announced, the real development still is waited. People are not confident of the financial benefit of solar system as the gas price for domestic use is over-subsidized (0,2 Euro/m3). Common people do not find payback time realistic, and there are not relevant subsidized loan systems. As regarding the EGCN activities, public awareness was raised by the EGCN conference in 2004, including press release on solar systems as well underlining the best practice examples in EU coun-tries like Belgium, Austria, Denmark and Poland presented in the conference. The advantages of integrated biomass-solar systems, that was presented in the conference and site visit in Salzburg 2004, were also discussed in the training in Budapest 2005 with a great interest by local government people. Italy In Italy, building integrated solar systems have been developed during the last years and the instal-lation of solar collectors has grown especially for DHW production but also for space heating, in connection with low temperature heating systems using floor radiant panels. The more diffused technology is flat-plate solar collectors but also vacuum tubes solar systems have being diffused, thanks to their best efficiency. The main application of solar systems are: • Public and private residential buildings (DHW and space heating). • Swimming pools. • Sporting centres. Thermal solar systems 2001 2002 2003 Solar collectors surface (m²) 301.000 348.050 400.000 Energy production (TJ) 507 586 673 Energy production (ktep) 12 14 16

Also PV technology for electricity production has been developed, thanks to the economic measures taken by the Italian government to diffuse this kind of solar system (10.000 PV roofs Italian pro-gramme). PV modules are mainly used for external lighting in urban area, to assist pumps of thermal solar systems, or to produce electricity to be put on the local electricity network. PV systems 2001 2002 2003 Total Pick power (kWp) 20.000 22.000 26.000 Electricity production (MWh) 16.477 18.498 22.546

(source: ENEA – Rapporto Energia Ambiente 2004)


Recently solar assisted cooling systems are considered very interesting and producers are focusing on these kinds of systems, creating new products for solar assisted air conditioning systems, based on the absorption technology. Air solar collectors, like the Solarwall technology, are used for ventilation air preheating and they are well applied in sporting centres and industrial buildings. During the last years Solarwall Italia have develop its market. Provincia di Torino recently issued a bid advertisement for financing integrated solar and biomass heating systems in buildings (installation). Lithuania Nowadays solar energy integrated systems are not popular in Lithuania. The main reasons are high investments costs and a little amount of sunny days in the country annually. Some examples of solar systems can be found in individual houses. As NPC supervises only dwelling houses and social houses and no individual houses, no concrete information about installed solar integrated systems can be found. This kind of information isn’t fixed by any institution in Lithuania. NPC, as EGCN project partner, promoted environment-friendly sources of fuel, so solar energy as well. However, as these systems are still not used in dwelling houses, NPC haven’t yet reached any direct visible effect about solar energy in dwelling houses. Most of the existing dwelling houses were built during Soviet Union period, when knowledge about this kind of energy was really poor. Concerning new built dwelling houses - it is also matter of price that is why builders use usual sources of energy (DH and natural gas most of all). The mentality of people has not changed a lot, actually, that is why it is still complicated to convince them in usage of more expensive, but environmental-friendly energy. However, talking about individual houses there are some exceptions. Some people that build their own houses prefer to invest once and to have more clean energy "for free". But it is also individual matter and no information is gathered where and what kind of energy is implemented in individual houses. This is real situation. Of course, there are a lot of enthusiasts of solar energy, which are gathered in different research centres groups and special associations that communicate with foreign countries for exchange of experience and know-how dissemination. But still talking about dwelling houses and social houses - solar technology is not used. Poland Since 2001 the development of solar systems, mainly used for hot water preparation, is noticed in Poland. Most of the investments are placed in private houses, but due to the Rawicz hospital in-vestment and very positive results of it next hospital decided to pay from their own money for the solar collators (ex. hospitals in Grojec, Szaserow-Warszawa, Rzeszów) Promotion of EGCN campaign, as well as seminars organised in many places in Poland speed up very much the market. It is difficult to say how many solar installations are now in Poland, but when EGCN project started there were only a dozen of them. Now it is assumed that in housing


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sector there are around 1,000 solar installations, used for hot water preparation. It is noticed big interest of co-operatives, and housing associations in that type of installations. Following this growing interest Foundation the Polish “EcoFund” decided to support the solar pan-els investments. EcoFund pays now up to 250 € per square meter of solar panel. 9.1.2 Efficient use of glazing The main need for European development in the area of “glazing” is to change the situation where window construction energy efficiency is only judged by help of the U-value of the used glazing solution. After very energy efficient low energy glazing has entered the European market the main energy losses are in the frame. In several European countries it is possible to obtain “passiv haus” standard windows with a total U-value of 0.8 W/m² °C, but in e.g. Denmark the best you can get is around 1.4 W/m² °C. From EGCN partners is below given short evaluation of national market development. Austria Energy efficiency of glazing is factored in existing system of subsidies for housing sector. But not the figure of U- value is important. On the contrary the total energy figure, called LEK- value, is important. The LEK- value is in principle calculated dimensions and U-values of outer- wall- ele-ments. The LEK-value of the subsidized objects had been in 2003 about 59,4 and now it’s about 26,3. (-56%). The international more common figure of specific heating requirements of the objects had been descending in the years from 1993 on: from 100 to 42 kWh/m². That means minus 58%. Picture: Development of the heating-requirements and the LEK-value.

Further devel-opment of

thermal standards means (almost) passive house standards. This development means higher demands on components, such as glazing materials (passive house certificated). But also there are higher demands on construction and workmanship.


Due to the fact, that demand for better thermal standards is stimulated by system of subsidies EGCN- work was concentrated on planning and workmanship. High quality in total result should be guaranteed by well-done coordination between all professionals involved. Enterprises of building sector who are working in field of low energy houses should easily find together. Clients should easily find excellent professionals. In a first meeting of architects, planners, producers needs and goals of a network for low-energy / passive-house standard in region of Salzburg were discussed. A small working group for further project development (Institute for ecology, architect, window-producer, installer) was started. In following working steps concept for starting such a network in region of Salzburg was worked out. Because of structure of enterprises in building sector in Salzburg, the comparatively small market of clients in Salzburg and the region of Bavaria in neighbourhood of Salzburg, a final concept for starting such a joint builders-network in regions of Salzburg and Bavaria was developed, which is not only based on energy-figures, but also on ecological and architectural issues as well as on com-fort of residents. Belgium Other application of glass in a building has been introduced to the Belgium market, where energy aspects are given higher priority. Effect of EGCN activities related to the conference in Westerlo October 2002 has primarily been the awareness amongst housing associations for raise of the K-worth of glass and for introducing other types of glazing to prevent too much sun lighting inside buildings. Czech Republic Massive exchange of old windows for windows with better heat resistance (K app. 1.1) took place in past three years. New buildings are designed with more glazing thanks to windows with better insulation and also as an architecture trend. EGCN project disseminated information about glazing, but yet without any direct measurable re-sults. As “DCBA checklist” also scores facade glazing, we think it will indirectly support it in new projects. This EGCN training tool developed in Belgium we translated into Czech version for use in our training with highly interest from municipalities and architects. Denmark Glazing has normally a low energy value of 1.1 W/m² °C, while total windows are not better than 1.4 – 1.8 W/m² °C. Promotion has been made to change this situation and in the first “passive house” project in Den-mark Cenergia has introduced windows with a U-value of 0.8 W/m² °C from Germany. It seems that Danish producers are working on improvements so better windows can be obtained by 2006 / 2007.


Greece Glazing of buildings is an area of good performance in Greece. Big windows and casements secure a very good level of inner natural light in the building’s spaces in most cases. This is aided also by the orientation of the buildings, usually Eastwards – Westwards. The atrium, an old building par-ticularity of Greek houses, has been long ago abundant, but we can meet it again in some public buildings, e.g. the University or public libraries. In older one or two storey houses wooden window frames have been replaced by aluminium ones, in order to obtain better insulation. In general, buildings before 1979 suffer from deficient insula-tion, on 1979 a Regulation for buildings’ insulation was applied and since then the insulation is much better. The building of DEMEKAV is a good demonstration example for the natural glazing of office blocks and during the EGCN program we had a good chance to promote it to other European part-ners and to school children as well. Hungary A better U-value glazing system got a good start by the Széchényi Plan (National Development Plan for Energy conscious upgrading) and in the subsidy system the minimum value of the windows was settled to U=1,8 W/m2K. There are rather good experiences in this development especially related the old rural houses and the concrete “panel buildings”. In the EGCN conference and the training, best practice was presented. The technology is available in a reasonable price level, and it is a god running support program in Hungary. Italy Energy efficient use of glazing is applied in a certain number of building projects thanks to the in-creasing interest of the architects towards innovative building technologies for energy saving. Energy efficient use of glazing is used mainly in new office building projects. Energy efficient use of glazing is nevertheless mainly found in demonstration building project and it’s not yet a building practice in Italy. But many Italian technical magazines often publish articles focused on new building projects where glazing is the most important building element. Lithuania Almost in all houses in Lithuania double-glazing is used. Concerning dwelling houses, there are standard windows in the houses built during Soviet Union period with a wooden frame. Nowadays there is a very active process of changing these windows by plastic ones. In new built dwelling houses mostly plastic windows with double or triple glazing are used. In individual sector various solutions can be found. Through the NPC website, as well as the NPC brochure “Save energy, heat and money!” NPC dis-seminate information about dwelling houses renovation including changing old windows to more energy efficient ones. This alternative of making energy usage more efficient in a house is consid-ered to be the cheapest and quickest in results. That is why it is spread widely in Lithuania.


Poland Due to the Polish climate the energy efficient windows is something very normal in Polish building. Typical glazing now have U=1,1 W/m2K. And it is therefore also a natural part of the Thermo mod-ernisation campaigns during EGCN project. 2-layer and also 3-layer glazing well-known now. 9.2 Energy efficient ventilation and emission free building materials Main interest for EGCN partners in this technology area was to create more focus on efficient venti-lation systems especially in Southern Europe – but also to promote emission free building materials amongst others to reduce needed ventilation. Project group was established with Metec (now Metec & Saggese), Italy – Cenergia, Denmark – and later on EMI, Hungary. Italy was made a starting point for initiatives related to EGCN confer-ence no 2 in Torino. But at the same time Cenergia pushed forward the cooperation with Danish technology developer on small heat recovery ventilation systems. During conference in Torino participants were introduced to ventilation systems from several Italian technology providers and experts – like solar collectors for building air cooling and “double skin” energy efficient “solar wall” building envelope. And amongst exhibited technologies was the Dan-ish “EcoVent” system for solar assisted ventilation with heat ecovery. Metec followed up by working out an Italian manual for the solar wall system in cooperation with Italian company “Solarwall” who after conference pushed forward resources to develop the Italian market for this ventilation system. Manual was put on EGCN website that had a visible growing number of Italian visitors after the conference. Later on the project group utilized EGCN conference no 3 in Budapest to introduce different “hy-brid ventilation systems” – one based on demand controlled sensor technologies and another based on natural ventilation principles combined with modern design techniques, materials and control strategies. Hungarian interests were followed up by EGCN partners EMI and Cenergia implementing a heat recovery ventilation demonstration project in social housing Ujpest district, Budapest, and then con-tinuing efforts by planning implementation of PV assisted heat recovery system and hybrid ventila-tion systems in ongoing “Demohouse” project (EU 6th Framework Programme project). Another clearly effect of EGCN activities has been seen in Czech Republic, where the Danish de-veloped EcoVent system was bought by Ventos for the training activities and for exhibition on last EGCN conference in Decin 15-16 June 2005. Local municipalities installed several heat recovery units in public buildings inspired from Ventos training and dissemination.


9.2.1 Efficient ventilation From EGCN partners is below given short evaluation of national market development. Austria Efficient ventilation is factored in existing system of subsidies for housing sector (max. of 0,4 W / m³). There are different systems, which are common. Centralized systems use 1 ventilation unit for several flats. In decentralized systems one unit is installed in each flat. In most cases ventilation is an important part of total concept of building. In case of decentralized systems there has to be paid high attention on the acceptance of ventilation systems. If they are not accepted, they are switched off; this may cause problems with total building concepts (e.g. to high humidity). Due to the realised possible problems with decentralized ventilation systems SIR had started a monitoring project on residential building called "Stieglgründe". Based on results and experiences of monitoring EGCN training concept for tenants and training manuals were worked out and im-plemented in expectation of increasing tenant's acceptance. Training manuals also were used at sec-ond building project Almbach, which was build in passive house standard. A functioning structure for self-organisation facilitates information and discussion with dwellers. Also a representative opinion-poll was running in spring 2004, to get information about satisfaction with building, heating system, air ventilation system and energy relevant information in general. Belgium Optimisation of ventilation as well natural as mechanical in housing association projects has be-come common part of projects now. During EGCN project we have seen experiences on heat-recovery ventilation being transferred to several building renovation projects in Belgium. Also the presentation of solar wall in Torino con-ference gave inspiration to project initiatives to include such principles Belgium Based on the experience from the EGCN network some new ideas regarding ventilation have been introduced in Zonnige Kempen projects: it concerns the “Solar Wall” idea, applied as a roof appli-cation with photovoltaic cells and a greenhouse system to pre-heat the ventilation air, both in the project Sint-Antoniusplein in Zoerle-Parwijs. In this project ventilation air is pre-heated from ground pipes, from passing below photovoltaic panels and from passing through a glazed atrium. Czech Republic Most new and reconstructed industrial and public buildings install controlled ventilation with high recuperation degree. This wasn’t the case three years ago. Local municipalities installed several recuperation units to public buildings under influence of EGCN project best practice dissemination – e.g. public pool in Nové město pod Smrkem, next year is planned reconstruction of local natural reserve information center in Krásná Lípa with use of ven-


tilation and recuperation unit. Smaller recuperation units were installed to many private houses, e.g. five by Ventos directly. Denmark In Denmark a lot of activities have been realised during the EGCN project concerning ventilation The main focus here has been on promoting a new type of only 22 cm thick, low cost, heat recovery ventilation system which has been developed by the Danish company EcoVent. A paper documenting the effect of the combined use of air tightness and use of heat recovery venti-lation is in the annex (Dalgasparken, Herning). Here tenants had reduced their heating bills by 50% compared to normal. At the Solengen housing project in Hillerød the mentioned technology has been introduced in a very rational way, in prefabricated housing by Scandi Byg, (extra installed costs including water to water heating element for air were 8.500 DKK / housing unit, 1.150 Euro). It has been shown that this technology is the cheapest way to meet the new Danish energy rules for housing by January 2006. Also the Rønnebækhave project at Næstved is using this technology leading to the first passive house design in Denmark. And in Bistruplund the technology is for retrofit.


Greece In Greece we have a good ventilation system for houses and apartments, since the typical Greek dwelling spares big casements and many windows that in combination help a lot at the good circula-tion of air in the house. The building of DEMEKAV with its bioclimatic design is a good demonstration example as far as the ventilation is concerned. During the EGCN training program targeted to schools, young children were shown and explained the operation of the ventilation system of the building, which is based on a special array of windows at the ground floor and first floor level. Hungary Efficient ventilation is a great demand in the residential building areas, relating to the fact that new windows have rather great air tightness. A great amount of failures was reported recently (officially and non officially) related non-adequate ventilation in new multi-dwelling housing projects. No PV operated ventilation has been used so far in Hungary. Also the higher requirements of the airtight-ness of living attics and lightweight construction appear in the market. One of the main issues of the EGCN Conference in 2004 Budapest was the hybrid ventilation sys-tems and good examples of PV operated HRV systems presented by Cenergia. Pilot project assem-bly of HRV unit was executed in Ujpest DEMO project in the newly refurbished social housing, achieving better ventilation in the small, overcrowded housing unit. Initiatives of the projected DEMOHOUSE project wit PV operated HRV and hybrid ventilation system in the refurbishment of an old military building in Újpest, Budapest, and multistory concrete panel building HRV ventila-tion in the Framework of SOLANOVA project in Dunaújváros district was presented in the EGCN training. New development in Budapest in the districts of Ferenváros and Józsefváros showed also interest in better indoor air climate and effective ventilation during the workshop preparatory meet-ing in 2005. April. Italy Efficient building ventilation in Italy is mainly based on the diffusion of the following technological systems: • Solar wall systems for building air ventilation preheating. • Heat recovery systems. • Natural ventilation systems. • Use of low-electricity fans. Italian norms and regulations about ventilation requirements in buildings are pushed towards energy efficient systems, and the possibility to have a better comfort and indoor quality also means grow-ing interests for ventilation systems in buildings. During EGCN project activities Metec disseminated amongst others good inspiration from Den-mark regarding heat-recovery ventilation systems including PV-assisted systems.


Lithuania In old dwelling houses only natural ventilation systems are used. However, efficient systems of ven-tilation in new dwelling houses are rather usual, where plate heat exchangers are used. There are some attempts to install mechanical ventilation in old dwelling houses, but this happens only in rare cases during renovation process. Through the NPC website, as well as the NPC brochure “Save energy, heat and money!” NPC dis-seminate information about dwelling houses renovation, and about using efficient ventilations sys-tems with heat recovering in dwelling houses. Poland In Poland the natural ventilation is still most popular, even in a new houses. The situation is differ-ent in public buildings, which usually are supplied with mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery. The problem is, that in all houses in most cases it is impossible to replace the natural ven-tilation with mechanical one, mainly due to the construction of the building, which do not allow assembling all necessary equipment. Seminars and training organised during the EGCN project allowed as to present RylkAir system (mechanical ventilation + heat recovery) to big audience (more than 1000 person participated in the events) and many of them decided to purchase the system and used it in their apartments. It is assumed that sale of this equipment grow up about 40% during last two years. 9.2.2 Emission free / natural building materials Concerning emission free building materials this can also be promoted by using the developed EGCN Green Build questionnaire and several of the developed EGCN Training Tool materials which support use of good materials. In several EGCN partner countries it has been possible to influence the use of emission free natural building materials and there also seems to be a general trend supporting this. From EGCN partners is below given short evaluation of national market development. Austria Since 2003 ecological building materials are factored in existing system of subsidies for housing sector considering acidification potential, global warming potential and grey energy of production. Activities were included in concept of the builders-network in Salzburg and Bavaria (mentioned in 9.1.2). Belgium Attention on the choice of materials has become much higher due to raised awareness about harm-ful materials to avoid in building projects.


The effect of EGCN project focus on natural building materials has caused excluding not durable materials from all Zonnige Kempen housing association projects. Recent example on this new pol-icy is the Zoerle Parwijs project. Czech Republic Expansion of use of natural materials is clearly visible. Wooden houses (from logs) are spreading, fired roof tiles are now most common type of roofing material, but also more expensive slate can be seen. Use of concrete is now mostly limited only to foundations. EGCN project promoted natural building materials, but without any direct measurable results yet. As DCBA checklist – which was well received during training activities - also scores use of natural building materials, we think it will indirectly support its wider use. Denmark In Denmark the Green Build questionnaire and point system have been introduced for a large num-ber of building projects especially in the housing sector. As part of EGCN activities support was given to SBS Urban Renewal to introduce this in their Green Design Toolbox and in the evaluation of this the Green Build system was given the highest support by e.g. the participating architects. Greece Armoured concrete is the main method to erect the modern blocks of flats in Greece and this has been chosen in order to support many storey constructions and also to withstand earthquakes, which is a very common phenomenon in Greece. There are some cases of older one or two storey houses that are built with stones and wood. Most of them have been under severe inner rearrangements, to meet the needs of modern families, but they retained the primal walls and the tiled roof. Having gained from the European partners’ experience DEMEKAV is now promoting the use of natural building materials in all constructions under its charge and is explaining the consideration of using natural building materials in the Volos Municipality’s constructions, as well. Hungary Natural building materials has a long architectural tradition in Hungary, sometimes with misunder-standing (for example: adobe is regarded generally out of date material), however synthetic materi-als is widespread as well. New application of natural material - for example cellulose for thermal insulation – has started being used. On the EGCN training was underlined the issue of sustainability relating to using local natural building materials. We have shortages from wood and rather strong burned clay industry. The wider use of some harvest – like for example straw is being recommended in pilot projects.


Italy Bioclimatic architecture and eco-buildings are actually demonstrative interventions, but the interest towards natural building material is growing and private or public building owners are more and more oriented to use natural building materials in order to obtain a better indoor quality, especially in consequences of the diffusion of allergies. Many regions in Italy are provided with new price lists of ecological building materials and in Torino have been created in the last years an information point for the eco-building practice. Public Housing Associations, like ATC of Torino, are carrying on different building projects based on the bioclimatic architecture criteria (like Vinovo project, one of EU supported European Green Cities building projects). EGCN inspiration from Austria has been supporting this development. Lithuania Almost all dwelling houses in Lithuania are built from bricks, concrete, without any isolation layer. Only in newly built dwelling houses requirements for isolation layer are taken into account. Actu-ally, most of the dwelling houses have low architectural value. But still there are no concerns about use of emission free building materials or natural building materials – as there is a long way to go on other higher prioritized building issues like energy savings. Poland For the moment use of natural or emission free building materials is not an issue of much considera-tion in Poland. Only recently NECA has been involved in a new project called “Eco products in construction industry”. 9.3 Renewable energy sources for building energy supply heating / cooling Main interests for EGCN partners in this technology area was to stimulate innovation of modern district heating/cooling systems to meet the challenge of reduced demand side caused by growing interests for more low-energy or even passive-housing standard. Another main interest was to push forward market development for use of renewable energy supply sources from biomass – similar to our interests for promoting solar energy. Project group was established with Demekav, Greece – Green City Denmark – and later on NPC, Lithuania. Starting point was the Green Build monitoring tool work, because urban energy supply became of highly interests for this part of EGCN project. Later on efforts were concentrated on the 4th EGCN conference in Salzburg, Austria, being prepared in cooperation with district heating experts from Greece, Denmark and Austria. This conference presented modern operation methods for district heating and “micro nets” adapted to low-energy approaches for energy supply which following has created very much interests in most of the EGCN partner countries including Denmark although having here a long time tradition for efficient district heating systems.


Another clearly effect of EGCN activities has been seen on the use of biomass, where EGCN part-ners in Austria primarily - but also in Czech Republic, Lithuania and Hungary – have contributed actively in implementing actual projects or given efficient inspiration to push forward market de-velopment. During 5th EGCN conference in Decin, Czech Republic, several national and foreign experts pre-sented latest research on energy crops showing a big potential for our Eastern Europe project part-ners. And during conference presentation as well as site visits EGCN partner Ventos and Decin city experts showed us own built biomass plants and the very modern Decin district heating plant utiliz-ing geothermic energy combined with natural gas – and combined to urban water supply. 9.3.1 Energy supply systems for heating/cooling In connection to the EU-Energy Performance Directive for Buildings it is very important to focus on how to reduce heat losses of district heating systems and heat supply systems so losses will not be a too high part of the total energy use. Inspiration from Austria on “micro district heating” has been valuable here. From EGCN partners is below given short evaluation of national market development. Austria Energy supply systems on district level based on biomass are well developed in Salzburg region. In October 2004 there were 44 biomass district heating systems running with total power of 69 MW and CO2- substitution of about 60.000 tons / year, in June 2005 there are already 55 power plants running with 109 MW in total and CO2- reduction of 90.000 tons/year. Amongst them are several municipal projects initiated by EGCN partner SIR as a visible effect of EGCN project activities. Energy supply systems will play a key role for reaching the targets of Kyoto in building sector (about 400.000 tons/year). Therefore further developments were done to create bigger supply sys-tems by connecting several systems on district level. Innovations were necessary to do that in an economic way. Small dimensions of pipes mean less investment and less heat losses. Also poten-tials of waste heat of industry have to be involved. First project in realisation now is connection between city of Hallein and city of Salzburg, with about 15 km distance. Belgium Research on new possibilities for collective use of heat is ongoing. Until now individual heating systems is generally always preferred in Belgium. Application of new CHP technology systems are now being used in Zonnige Kempen housing asso-ciation projects inspired from European Green Cities projects.


Czech Republic Where effective, central heating systems are commonly used for heating and warm water. This de-velopment was caused by beneficial price of natural gas, which was unfortunately dramatically raised lately. Mostly is used cogeneration for joined electricity production. Trends to install new thermostatic valves for heaters, insulate facades, exchange windows are also present in the region. EGCN project further promoted and supported these initiatives and also Ventos is now using pre-insulated pipes for distribution network. Thanks to the EGCN training based on actual energy audits, these above described measures will be taken on two public buildings next year. Denmark In Denmark Cenergia has worked with the municipality of Hilleroed to judge which kind of energy supply system is optimal for a new urban development area with 1600 housing units, and if district heating based on CHP would still be a useful solution compared to the aimed at low energy housing of the future. Greece As far as heating is concerned we have a major change in process, which is the replace of oil with natural gas, as the main fuel for heating. This is now introduced in dwellings and in productive sec-tor as well, and there is a big boost from government for this adaptation. Cooling is mainly obtained with electric air conditioners and this is a problem from many aspects. Respiratory disorders to the people long exposed in air-conditioned rooms and big energy consump-tions during hot summer days that threaten the system to collapse are the major problems being identified. For this reason the Greek Ministry of Development prepares now for the first time legis-lation in order to abate air conditioners in public buildings. EGCN contributed in an ambitious (for the Greek circumstances) attempt that DEMEKAV has up taken, which is the use of natural gas for heating in all public buildings in Volos. This attempt started as an idea before the beginning of the program and was boosted by EGCN dissemination and training activities. In this phase we are at the pleasant point to anticipate the use of natural gas in most public buildings from the next winter period. Hungary District heating is used mainly for concrete panel housing estates and in some city centres, but the natural gas is the privileged energy source in Hungary. Good examples however in geothermic use, biomass and cogeneration are also found, operated basically by greater local energy suppliers. In the Budapest conference, the training and the personal meetings on the advantages and develop-ment of district heating systems was widely discussed. The heavy subsidy on domestic gas price causes a lot of problems on inventing alternative and renewable energy for residential sector. Good examples for geothermic power and strategy of district heating companies – related to im-proved image of district heating and better use of waste energy - was presented in the conference and discussed in the training.


Italy Development of energy efficient energy supply systems is mainly due to the diffusion of the follow-ing high efficiency systems for energy supply: • Cogeneration (CHP systems). • District heating. • Condensing boilers. CHP systems are being diffused thanks to the liberalization of the energy market in Italy and to the tax relief foreseen for the energy production (heat and electricity) by CHP systems. As far as cooling systems concerns, recently electricity consumption for air cooling in buildings has grown, due to higher and higher temperatures during the summer. Technology producers are developing low energy systems for air-cooling especially heat pumps and tri-generation systems. Also solar assisted cooling systems are considered very interesting consisting in solar assisted air conditioning systems, based on the absorption technology. Lithuania There is no district-cooling network in Lithuania, because of small amount of very hot days in com-parison to other countries. On the other hand, separate conditioning split systems can be used rather often, especially in the offices. Nowadays about 70% of the residential house area in Lithuania is heated from district heating (DH) systems. There are ~ 50 DH companies of different fuel types and capacities in the country. Two electricity generating, one transmission and two distribution companies replaced a single mo-nopolistic company of electricity production, transmission and distribution “Lietuvos Energija”. One large dam on the Nemunas River for hydropower generation and one Kruonis Pumped Storage Power Plant (PSPP) have been built in Lithuania. A nuclear power station in Ignalina (NPP), in the east of the country will be replaced by natural gas over some years. Through EGCN project activities, the necessity of using environmental friendly fuel in energy sup-ply systems was stressed. In November 2004 during 4th EGCN conference in Salzburg, this topic was touched and experience from different countries was shared. There was presentation about nowadays situation in Lithuania, concerning biomass usage, carbon dioxide emission trading, pos-sibilities and threats of renewable energy usage in Lithuanian energy supply systems. This information, as well as presentations from other countries was put on the NPC website, besides on the Lithuanian district heating association website so that district heating companies or other could reach it, and get necessary consultations. As well, success story of renovation process was disseminated through the NPC website, as well as through EGCN network website.


Poland General development is the change from coal to natural gas and from oil to natural gas in individual heating systems for each building. District heating is not an issue of much interest in Poland. So our main contribution to heating system improvements during EGCN activities has been to disseminate efficient heating systems for individual buildings. 9.3.2 Renewable energy sources from biomass In countries like Austria biomass has been introduced with a very good success. But in e.g. Denmark the government is not supporting the use of it in gas and CHP based district heating areas. In Belgium a positive development has started based on EGCN. From EGCN partners is below given short evaluation of national market development. Austria Using biomass is factored in existing system of subsidies for housing sector. Almost half of new built housing area is supplied with biomass. Graphic: Apartments using biomass system in % (of total m²)

10 812

18 20,7

30,4

42,449,4

61,454,8

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Besides this enormous market growth it is necessary to have an immanent incentive for a better quality. Binding declarations for criteria have been worked out. Besides housing sector buildings of tourism (hotel, restaurants) are another important target group for using biomass. Trends for building wellness areas mean higher annual energy costs. There is also an existing system for subsidies (30% of investment costs). But obviously there is no great market penetration of biomass heating systems in hotels and restaurants indistinguishable.


Belgium First steps of utilizing biomass in Belgium has been taken inspired by EGCN project activities. The first installation in a Zonnige Kempen housing association project is the Grobbendonk Wijngaardstraat project for 20 houses. After EGCN conference no 4 in Salzburg, Zonnige Kempen consulted SIR for preparing above mentioned new project to be a pioneering project in Belgium. Czech Republic New biomass using district heating plants were built in the Bohemian region. Usage of the forestry and agriculture side-products (wood-chips, straw etc.) is widening, distribution network improved as well as grew number of purchasing places. Smaller installations are becoming popular for indus-trial buildings as well as individual houses (boilers burning wood, wood briquettes, wood chips). The EGCN project promoted use of biomass and especially the last EGCN conference in Decin created hopefully lasting momentum. Contacts between potential biomass suppliers and purchasers were made, which corresponds with topic of insufficient biomass supply tackled on one of the EGCN training workshops. Biomass district heating plant was built by Ventos in Rybniště, where the experience gained in the EGCN project was utilized. The boiler burns wood chips, sawdust par-ticles and straw. Denmark In Denmark Biomass was assessed for the Ulleroedbyen urban development area and the result was that it could be used with a good user economy and a good company economy. However, due to new Danish rules the society economy leads to a bad result so the technology can-not compete with CHP cased district heating based on gas. Greece Biomass is not used at all for generating energy, with the exception of some private productive units, mainly in agriculture. To this a major obstacle, till very recently, was the lack of relative leg-islation and special incentives. During our travels to our European partners’ countries, in Austria and Czech Republic, we have seen cases of plants using biomass to generate energy for heating and hot water for use and we have been informed about the potential of biomass and bio-fuels, the technologic demands and the prob-lems met from them. Biomass plants and natural gas plants where good examples for us to see when visiting our Euro-pean partners and we do believe that these are to be seriously examined in Greece after some years. Hungary Up to now biomass is used only in pilot projects in Hungary, recently a great power station was erected in South Hungary in Pécs region.


The advantages of biomass and biomass combined solar systems were presented in the Budapest EGCN conference by Austrian partner SIR and has got great interest. However, small-scale biomass is rather expensive comparing the cheap gas price even calculated some available grant of EU struc-tural funds. In the training, biomass a biogas plants was presented by examples of abroad (Austria, Denmark), and this area has a great potential, if the subsidy on gas will be reduced. Italy Biomass heating systems have been diffused in the last years thanks to the interest by the public building sector - especially in school building sector. Biomass district heating systems are mainly realised to supply different building stocks, but also autonomous heating systems, burning pellets, are diffused. Biomass is used also in CHP systems. Biomass heating systems 2001 2002 2003 Energy production (TJ) 103.641 104.247 116.519

(source: ENEA – Rapporto Energia Ambiente 2004) Provincia di Torino recently issued a bid advertisement for financing integrated solar and biomass heating system installations in buildings. EGCN inspiration from Austria on biomass heating sys-tems has been useful to support the development in Italy. The technology producers have done a strong market activity in the last years and dedicated confer-ence and workshops are organised every year in different Italian cities. Lithuania Today energy amount produced from biomass takes about 6 % of all primary energy consumption in Lithuania. It is expected to raise this number till 8-9 % by the year 2010. The conditions for bio-mass implementation in Lithuania are very suitable, as ~30 % of the territory is covered by forests, lower price comparing to the fossil fuel, relatively not expensive technologies for producing energy from biomass. Unfortunately, there are some threats for biomass implementation, such as plans to build cellulose plant in Lithuania and it would distort the biomass market because of changed demand and con-sumption. The same is about plans to build large CHP plant based on biomass in Vilnius. These intentions caused confusion for smaller biomass DH companies, especially in closer to Vil-nius regions, as there is a risk of fuel lack. Growing biomass demand in the country, as well as its active export, can lead to the higher biomass prices in Lithuania. We can already observe this ten-dency during the last few years. It is very serious obstacle for biomass implementation, as investors are not willing to take such a risk of investing in technologies that use this kind of fuel. During 4th EGCN conference, which was located in Salzburg, Austria and where issues about build-ing energy supply systems were discussed there was presentation about nowadays situation in Lithuania for biomass usage – amongst others presenting results of biomass feasibility study worked out in a cooperation to Danish EGCN expertise on biomass and EGCN partner Green City Denmark.


The NPC website disseminated this presentation as well as the other conference presentations. Poland Some interests for biomass use is shown, but mainly in rural areas – not yet for city heating etc. purpose.


10. Lessons learned Carrying out this thematic network project gave us many new experiences about project implemen-tation aspects including some unexpected incidents and some accelerating developments in both positive and negative directions. 10.1 Problems, solutions and successes From project start-up we had a very positive development of internal partner cooperation during forming project groups, preliminary deciding upon where to locate conferences and training courses and about defining dissemination and communication strategies. We concentrated on early launching of website to facilitate early dissemination of some firstly se-lected 11 demo projects from previous Thermie project “European Green cities”. But this process of defining layout and a balance of technical specification level of described technologies to reach different target groups comprising both end-users and experts was more time consuming than ex-pected. Once we found a satisfying way of website – it was on the other hand very positive to follow the rapidly growing number of visitors and to experience that each major conference event was fol-lowed by regional much higher interests to visit the website. Amongst occurred problems we realised that general feasibility calculations for actual technologies often cannot fulfil local decision makers’ requirements – so we learned that climate criteria and local energy prices are part of necessary product information. Therefore we introduced a table with “Energy prices” to be updated periodically from our EGCN member cities. One major problem was to reach the point where we could start developing Green Build monitoring tools giving added value to many already developed tools. We were for long time trying to work on financial sector representatives for developing kind of “Green Bonds” that we had proposed as a main initiative in our project application. 10.2 Project modifications The developing of “Green Bonds” had to be left out as not realistic – although we did contribute in developing the “Copenhagen Solar Cells Stock Exchange” where you can now by shares in solar cells projects. But the solution was more like indirectly supporting building project value by further developing Green Build monitoring tools aiming at building level and especially as added value in hereby pro-ject at urban area level. Thus our developed Green Build Urban Area monitoring tool helps city representatives and builders etc. to promote building qualities giving priority to energy efficient technologies – which according to financial sector representatives will provide a basis for setting higher estimated building values. At the end this will contribute to achieve better financial condi-tions e.g. higher loans when it is better quality buildings/urban areas regarding energy & environ-mental efficient technologies being used.


Linked to this we also had to modify about developing an “European Green Cities Certificate” in the thought of version – as we could not within project period reach an implementation of such cer-tificate. But we reached an established basis for following possible issuing such certificates by us-ing our developed Green Build Urban Area monitoring tool for periodic monitoring progress in di-rection of more sustainable urban building implementations. 10.3 Project perspectives Our main project objective - to push market development and further technology innovation for sustainable housing – still has a long way to go before fully market penetration in many European countries for even the best economic feasible technologies. Our approach by combining inspiration from selected demo projects with regional targeted confer-ences and training seems successful when focusing on European “Green Cities” as local entrance to building and energy sector key persons to be addressed. Therefore European Green City Network partners have initiated more similar project initiatives e.g. one recently started project “Green City Building” for developing different specific local urban area strategies for sustainable housing and a common “Green Building Urban Management System” to support the improving of City Council building decision systems into more sustainable efficient direction. 10.4 Conclusions EGCN network secretariat has been very well established at Green City Denmark which frequently receive directly email or phone requests for technology information or partner search etc. – besides the high number of visitors to www.europeangreencities.com Green City Denmark will also periodically update the website during next years in relation to other ongoing projects for supporting sustainable housing – firstly related to project “Green City Build-ing” comprising 13 EGCN partners from 6 EU countries – Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary and Poland. We have learned that dissemination by information material and website presentations doesn’t work without major regional and local efforts in terms of conference events or training workshops – es-pecially in the new Eastern European EU member states where both awareness rising and language barriers demands a lot of extra efforts from our EGCN project partners to reach target groups and next after to affect behaviours. Once getting such process successfully started it is on the other hand very promising for future mar-ket development to see the commitment and eagerness from city key persons and technicians etc. to make fast progress – but at the same time overwhelming to realise the lacking financial possibilities for implementing sustainable housing and energy supply in waste urban areas of Budapest, Warsaw, Vilnius and many other Eastern European cities.

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