re-MODULEES

Project

The EU aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050: a zero greenhouse gas economy. To achieve this ambitious goal, the majority of European buildings require deep retrofitting that will improve their energy efficiency.

However, in the residential sector, numerous barriers on the demand and supply side prevent building retrofitting from reaching the expected scale. Benefiting from overcoming these barriers would be the property owners and the inhabitants, both in economic terms and in terms of quality of life.

EU-funded projects have enabled the development of a wide range of technical solutions, innovative business models and financial schemes targeting the practices of retraining, generally supporting holistic people-centered approaches with effectiveness across the entire value chain. The connection and combination of such solutions would enable their full potential to be exploited.

The re-MODULEES project, funded by the Horizon 2020 program, seizes this opportunity and is a "spin-off" initiative, i.e. it stems from the group of several Horizon 2020 projects related to deep retraining.

Goals

The overall objective of re-MODULEES is to create a European framework for the energy efficiency of existing residential buildings through the generation and development of standardized modules for activating and strengthening the market for building energy retrofitting.

The key concept of modularity implied in the name of the project is understood as multilevel and multitarget. Multilevel refers to "breaking down" the entire retrofitting process into standardized segments, energy efficiency and clean energy solutions, in order to select the most effective tools and approaches. Multi-target refers to the "customization" of retrofitting solutions according to regional climatic, building, socio-economic and market conditions, so as to maximize cost reduction, commercial spillovers and local impact.

The main barrier faced by re-MODULEES is the lack of real fruition and capitalization of the technical and non-technical solutions developed so far by previous European-level research projects. re-MODULEES specifically aims to capitalize on these solutions and implement the results achieved within a purpose-built platform for the activation of the retrofitting market.

The platform will enable the promotion of user-driven operational models-business models-for energy efficiency and encourage stakeholders to undertake the redevelopment process.

Activities

In order to demonstrate the full local and national validity of the "re-MODULEES modules," 3 main actions will be undertaken:

Activation of 7 pilot redevelopment markets - Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, France, Greece, the Netherlands and Slovenia - representative of a variety of market structures and scenarios;

Creation of 7 digital and 4 physical Renovation HUBs: centers for the implementation of re-MODULEES tools, services and solutions and for the promotion of the deep redevelopment market;

Creation of local advisory boards (re-LABs) to test and validate the re-MODULEES solutions and platform and carry out broad stakeholder engagement.

Role of Certimac

Within re-MODULEES Certimac is leader of WP4 - Demonstration in Pilot Markets & LABs Activation. Specifically, he is the leader and coordinator of the Emilia Romagna re-LAB. He also drew the guidelines and followed the implementation of the re-LABs in the other 6 European countries involved in the project (Netherlands, France, Bulgaria, Greece, Spain and Slovenia).

In addition, thanks to the long-standing background of Certimac's experts in energy efficiency and models of innovations applicable to building rehabilitation, Certimac contributes to:

- profile the Italian redevelopment market;

- Capitalize on redevelopment practices at the European level;

- define the methodological framework of re-MODULEES;

- support the development, implementation and deployment of the Platform.