UL4C is designed to capture and apply and evaluate interventions in the low carbon building delivery and in use process to ensure that buildings carbon emissions reductions are maximised through technical and process solutions that focus on the building owners, managers and occupiers.
Northwest Europe (NWE) INTERREG VB: Priority 2 – LOW CARBON in Non-Domestic Buildings
The following proposal outlines a potential NWE project led by the University of Salford in partnership with Greater Manchester (GM). Its focus is PRIORITY 2 – Low Carbon, addressing Thematic Objective 2: To reduce GHG emissions in NWE through international co-operation of low carbon, energy or climate protection strategies. The focus is addressing Low Carbon in Non-Domestic Buildings, including both the public and commercial stock within the city.
This builds on existing good practice, including a knowledge of the results of other previous INTERREG projects, including the CAPEM project, which focused on new energy efficiency products, REGAIN, looking at estate management, and Living Green, which focused on delivery and in use issues around low carbon domestic properties. These priorities also link with a number of low carbon projects under the Energy Efficient Buildings Programmes under both FP7 and Horizon 2020. The GM team are keen to capture learning form previous EU and national work within the bid.Partners:
Salford University (lead), Greater Manchester Combined Authority Partners should be public authorities (cities or regions) and research institutions from the Northwest Europe Area.
Proposed partners should have the following;
- The city should have a low carbon strategy that refers to buildings
- A research/ technical partner linked to the city
- An identified technology or solution for usable low carbon buildings that they are prepared to champion and implement
Duration in months: 36
Background:
Greater Manchester (GM) Environment Team is currently developing a work programme to support the retrofit of all non-domestic and public buildings in GM (including mixed use and heritage sites). This program will aim to deliver the deepest possible energy efficiency savings to enable GM and other European partner cities to achieve their challenging carbon reduction targets.
This work has identified a number of city specific challenges, which appear to be applicable to different extents in NWE urban environments;
- Lack of detailed performance and benchmarking data on current performance, particularly in the commercial sector to help establish baselines.
- Performance Gap between as designed and in use for low carbon buildings
- Issues of usability and complexity around energy management and low carbon in buildings
- Lack of accessible demonstrators with evidence to support the business case and make risk of implementation more transparent for the market.
- Barriers to adoption including issues such as client awareness, supply chain readiness, split incentives and a well developed innovation context, such as links to research base.
Specific work in the domestic sector has seen a growth in adoption of low carbon retrofit. The project intends to build on previous actions in various NWE partner cities around sustainable retrofit and low carbon buildings.
Main Aim of the Project:
Main Aim is to increase the uptake and impact of innovative low carbon technologies (heating, lighting, storage, control and optimisation) across all non-domestic building archetypes in a number of European cities using a building user focus.
Next Steps:
The first NWE Interreg VB call for projects is likely to be announced in April 2015 with a deadline in May 2015.
Further information and contact persons:
Partners interested in this project are asked to contact Rodolphe Soulard by 4th February 2015. A Partners event is to be organised in early 2015. Please contact us for more information.
