New European directives on energy efficiency, targeting a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be achieved by 2023, are triggering deep renovation building projects, which are largely responsible for these emissions. This high demand for the transformation of the existing building stock makes us consider the need to execute this type of renovation projects in the shortest period of time. Furthermore, it is important to offer an adequate cost/benefit balance for the proposed interventions.
And in this process of transition towards climate-neutral buildings, how can the use of new technologies and the application of methodologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) help in the implementation of deep renovation projects? The adoption of BIM models, traditionally used for new buildings, can provide important decision support when selecting solutions to be implemented in renovation projects. This was one of the main objectives of the H2020 BIM-SPEED Project, to improve deep renovation projects of residential buildings, reducing the time and costs associated with them, and promoting the use of BIM among the different stakeholders involved. To this end, standardised processes, with the creation of Use Cases, and different BIM‑based tools were developed as part of the BIM‑SPEED web platform ecosystem, as well as training materials on how to use these services1. To address interoperability issues, different ETLs (Extract, Transform and Load) and BIM connectors were implemented.
Interoperability framework between BIM tools and the BIM-SPEED web platform, showing the connection to the implemented ETLs and BIM Connectors. To ensure the reliability of the data, different Checker tools were applied
It was also possible to see how beneficial the combination of Machine Learning techniques with BIM models is for decision making in deep renovation projects, allowing the automatic selection of the most appropriate renovation option. This selection is based on national building envelope regulations, and also takes into consideration a number of user-defined input parameters on the limitations of its application2. The combination of the Scan to BIM process with the automatic creation of walls in BIM, using point clouds as input data, was also of great interest to end users3.
And now, what else?
The possibilities of using BIM models do not end with the renovation phase of the building. These models can also play a key role in the Operation and Maintenance phase. The development of Digital Building Twins based on BIM models can help in the optimisation and control of buildings to improve their energy performance. In line with this, projects such as BuildON, coordinated by CARTIF, and SMARTeeSTORY, the latter focused on monitoring and optimisation of the energy performance of non-residential historical buildings, are starting. We will keep you updated on further developments in future posts.
2 Mulero-Palencia, S.; Álvarez-Díaz, S.; Andrés-Chicote, M. Machine Learning for the Improvement of Deep Renovation Building Projects Using As-Built BIM Models. Sustainability2021, 13, 6576. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13126576
3 Álvarez-Díaz, S.; Román-Cembranos, J.; Lukaszewska, A.; Dymarski, P. 3D Modelling of Existing Asset Based on Point Clouds: A Comparison of Scan2BIM Approaches. In 2022 IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for Living Environment (MetroLivEn); IEEE, 2022; pp 274–279. https://doi.org/10.1109/MetroLivEnv54405.2022.9826964
We are currently witnessing a profound transformation of the global energy model, driven by the need to curb the steady increase in the Earth’s temperature caused by climate change. The EU´s commitment to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and to reduce GHG emissions to 55% of 1990 levels by 20301means a huge challenge and requires a radical shift from a traditional centralised, fossil fuel-based energy system to a decentralised, decarbonised and renewable energy system.
In this context, the figure of Energy Communities emerges as a key actor that promotes the territorial deployment of renewable energies, empowers citizens and facilitates the generation of new services, consolidating local economies and fighting against energy poverty and climate change.
How can an Energy Community be set up?
In most cases they are generated by a group of citizens with support of a public entity. This support can come through the transfer of land or a building roof for the installation of photovoltaic panels for collective self-consumption. But something more is needed, it must be given a legal aspect. In this sense, there are two types, Renewable Energy Communities (REC)2 and Citizen Energy Community (CEC)3 . REC is focused on the production and consumption of renewable energy, while CEC is more aimen at the electricity sector, inlcuding electricity agreggation and storage, as well as the provision of recharging and energy efficiency services.
Next step is to decide what type of legal entity best meets the community needs. The options are: cooperative, association or commercial company (S.L or S.A), the first two being the most common, and in particular, the association, the simplest to implement because it does not require a public deed to be constituted. A constitution agreement is made between three or more natural or legal persons, and a founding act is drawn up. In addition, it has the advantage that the participation of its members is open and voluntary, with no minimum capital requirement.
Finally, nothing would make sense if there is no concrete project behind it. This could be collective self-consumption, a heating and cooling network, a citizen photovoltaic park, the provision of energy services, shared electric mobility or electric vehicle charging services, mainly.
To make any of these projects a reality, technology plays a key role. It is about to electrifying the grid without using fossil fuels and Energy Communities are a very valuable tool to change the current energy system and move in the direction of energy transition ,promoting distributed generation. Renewable generation technologies are already mature and are constantly evolving. Storage batteries, an indispensable complement to renewable generation, are competitive and constantly improving. In addition, smart management tools allow Energy Communities to be independent from the grid thanks to the intelligent data management and the implementation of decision-making tools based on Artificial Intelligence, machine-learning and predictive knowledge of user behaviour, environmental, socio-economic and electricity system elements.
Climate change is a phenomenon which has been scientifically observed for several decades, but it was not until the 1980´s that the term became widely popular and it has been growing ever since. Nowadays, not a week goes by without a new alarming headline appears, warning of record temperatures, decreasing rainfall, and the more frequent and damaging natural disasters.
Against this backdrop, mass media and public awareness of climate change has increased and, consequently, the pressure on governments and companies to establish more effective policies. Thus, climate and sustainability policies are created as actions and measures adopted by companies and policy-makers to face the climate change challenges and foster a sustainable future.
Although it was in 1972 when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was created at the 1st United Nations Conference on the Environment, concern for environmental security is not a recent topic, but it is estimated that as early as 1750 b.C the Mesopotamian Hammurabi Code established penalties for those who damage the nature.
From then until today, climatic science has changed a lot and, currently, the Conference of the Parties (COP) are held annually. They are summits held by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in which the 197 member parties reach a consensus on climate measures for the coming years. Out of the 27 COPs that have been held, the most relevant have undoubtedly been COP3 or the Kyoto Protocol and COP21 or the Paris Agreement.
Climate policies are mainly focused on cutting Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, which are the major drivers of global warming. To achieve this goal, governments promote renewable energy sources, improved energy efficiency as well as independence from fossil fuel in the main economic sectors (e.g. transport, buildings and industry).
Climate policies ofthen have a specific objective when they are implemented, but they might sometimes generate unexpected effects, both positive (co-benefits) and negative (trade-offs). These co-benefits may not only be reflected in the environmental situation, but can also generate economic and even social benefits.
This interrelationship among economy, society and environment eas not taken into account until the emergence sustainability concept. Sustainability policies focus on promoting the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are a total of 17 specific targets that address global challenges in the three basic pillars: environmental protection, social development and economic growth.
Though the application of climate measures in the most “traditional” sectors is essential to reduce our environmental impact, both policy-makers and the society have realised that a deeper redesign of our daily habits is needed. As a result, new regulations are continuously promoted in order to shift consumption trends and even to implement new approaches to educate future generations.
Nevertheless, all that glitters in not gold and it should be borne in mind that sustainability and climate policy implementation might be a complex process that requires a careful planning and assessment of the expected effects. Therefore, how can policy-makers be sure to establish a measure if there is a possibility of further damage? This is where “Integrated Assessment Models” (IAMs) are introduced.
IAMs are analytical tools for assessing and estimating the impacts of diverse climate policies in various areas such as the economy, the environment or the social awareness, by selecting which sectors and regions to focus on. With these models, policies can make scientifically supported decisions to address climate change or they can use them to justify previous measures.
The usefulness of IAMs is immense as long as they are well-used, but if the right optimal conditions are not met, they can become simply incomplete representations of the future. The correct functioning of these models requires the effective involvement of politicians and other stakeholders in the IAM development stage, as well as the correct definition of the policy to be modelled (what is the issue to be addressed and the objective of its implementation, what is its spatial and temporal resolution, etc.). Once these conditions have been met, it is essential to ensure that the chosen policy and model are compatible, as not all IAMs have enough capacity to forecast the impact of such a measure, either because it does not include the sector of application, because the geographical location cannot be specified, or because the temporal horizon is too long to be considered by the IAM. Currently, the efforts are focused on creating IAMs with greater diversity and capacity to implement policies that are not only related to the economy, but also to social and environmental factors.
At CARTIF we have been actively involved in IAMs for a long time and, in fact, together with our colleagues at UVA, we have developed an IAM called WILLIAM. We are also involved in several European projects, such as IAM COMPACT or NEVERMORE, which aimed at improving the assessment, transparency and cosistency of models.
Decarbonisation of the industrial sector is currently is at the heart of the European agenda, as it seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve agreed climate targets. The European Union aims to be climate neutral by 2050; that is to say, it has set itself the goal of having an economy with zero net greenhouse gas emissions. According to Eurostat, the industrial sector accounts for approximately 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. Action in this area is therefore crucial in the fight against climate change.
An increase in the energy efficiency of industry in Europe is essential to reach the climate targets mentioned above and one effective way to address this is the utilisation and revalorisation of waste heat produced in industrial processes. This can be achieved through high-temperature heat pumps, which operate without electricity consumption and use waste heat to produce energy-intensive thermal energy and for industrial processes. The integration of these technologies could potentially cover 15.3% of the thermal demand of industrial processes. To learn more about heat pumps I invite you to visit the following article on our blog where you will find a very encouraging perspective on these technologies.
Furthermore, the potential integration of renewable energies is essential for change and these technologies can work in a complementary way with renewable energy sources such as solar thermal energy.
CARTIF is part of the PUSH2HEATproject consortium, a research and development project in the field of industrial decarbonisation. It´s a project funded through the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme that aims to overcome the barriers to the deployment of high temperature heat pump technologies for a better use of heat in the industrial sector. The market for such technologies is currently limited, but with the creation and implementstion of appropiate exploitation roadmaps and business models, very promising figures can be achieved on the road to emission reductions in the energy sector. Based on an estimated annual process heat demand of 298TWh between 90 and 160ºC that could potentially be covered by heat pump technologies and assuming a COP of 4 for the heat pump, 45Mt of CO2eq emissions could be avoided by switching from gas boilers to these electrically driven technologies. This corresponds to approximately 8.3% of the overall UE27 greenhouse gas emission reduction target from 2020 to 20230.
PUSH2HEAT, with a duration of 48 months, will bring together experts from different fields to drive the market and address existing technical, economic and regulatory barriers to waste heat recovery through large scale demonstration of heat-enhancing technologies in various industrial contexts with supply temperatures between 90 and 160ºC.
CARTIF is delighted to work with a consortium that is motivated to achieve satisfactory results to the challenges posed in the project and to continue with the necessary energy transition for a more sustainable future at the industrial sector.
If you want to keep up to date with the process, stay tuned for the results!
“Pumps, pumps…” So goes one of the best-known songs by a Spanish artist from the early and mid-90s Spanish music scene. Although too much has happened since then, we can relate the theme to the current energy crisis we are suffering, caused by the war between Ukraine and Russia.
We are talking about heat pumps.
The concept of how heat pumps works is very simple, in fact, we all have a very similar, refrigeration machine at home, the refrigerator. Heat pumps, like the fridge, base their operation on compressing a refrigerant liquid contained in a closed circuit. This liquid is capable of collecting heat from the environment (in the case of the fridges, it collects heat from inside the fridge, cooling it) and thanks to the compression it undergoes, its temperature increases. This heat is then dissipated in the grille at the back.
The same applies to heat pumps, which are able to collect heat from the outside (even if the temperature is low) and thanks to the compression of the refrgierant, increases its temperature, thus making indoor heating possible.
Because heat pumps are highly efficient equipment, they don´t help to reduce the energy bill of our homes.
Im sure you have heard oft aero-thermal heating, right? Well, if you have any doubts about what it consists of, it is based on the operation of a heat pump that collects heat from the air in the outside environment (hence its name).
It is well known and proven that more than 40% of the energy consumed in Europe is used to air-condition homes. In this sense, heat pumps are the perfect ally as they offer us an efficiency of around 400%, that is to say, for every unit of energy they use, which is usually electrical energy, they are capable of producing 4 units of thermal energy (both heating and cooling), thus offering us high savings rates. In addition, new technologies nowadays allow us to reach higher and higehr heating temperatures due to the use of new coolants and new technologies, such as heat pumps based on acoustic waves that replace the electrical energy source with ultrasound to excite the coolant and thus increase its temperature, but…
Is all that glitters gold? Let´s take a look at it; actually when talking about savings from the use of heat pumps, we have to talk about energy savings and then..we look at the money. Calculating the economic savings provided by theseenergy savings is extremely complicated in the times in which we live, let me explain; currently the price of electricity (the most common energy source for heat pumps) is on a constant roller coaster, where you can see every day how the price changes considerably between the valley-flat-peak periods, in addition to the difference in the intra-daily price (nobody really knows why, there could be many explanations that would take several entries in this blog).
In addition to the price, the different energy sources have to be taken into account, as it is not the same thing to replace a gas or oil boiler, electric heaters or any other heating source with a heat pump. This makes it more difficult to talk about economic savings because the different energy sources also come into play
A third derivative in the economic sense, and something that heat pumps manufacturers do not usually take into account, is that in the case of installation in a home, this is not normally prepared to cover the new electricity consumption that is going to be produced by the installation of the pump, and I will explain this with an example:
Let´s imagine we have a 37kW gas boiler of supplying heat to a house and we want to replace this boiler with a heat pump. We have already mentioned that this equipment offers a ratio of 4 to 1 in terms of heat production and electricity consumption, therefore, to cover 37kW of heat, we have to consume 37/4 =9.25kW of electrical power which we will probably not have contracted and contracting them will increase the bill we are going to pay every month in terms of the fixed term, whether we use the heat pump or not.
So we are saving or not? The ideal way to estimate the savings from installing or replacing an old boiler with a heat pump should be done implementing a reliable measurement and verification protocol, as has been done in the REUSEHEATproject in which CARTIF has participated in the implementation of the IPMVP. To this end, monitored data from the heat generation systems of several demonstratos have been used, connected to the internet via different IoT protocols, send this data to a common platform where the energy savings are calculated.
This savings are calculated on the basis of a mathematical model made with the data from the time period before the installation of the heat pump. Once the actual consumption after the installation of the heat pump is known, the conditions under which this consumption was achieved (weather, indoor comfort,etc.) are taken into the model and the energy that would have been consumed under the conditions prior to the installation of the heat pump is calculated.
At this point, knowing the energy that has been saved, the moneysaved by using heat pumps could be estimated economically, on the basis of an average price, a more detailed estimate of the price, or as you think best.
Savings obtained at the REUSEHEAT project in one of the demonstrators (comparison real consume vs model at the superior part and savings obtained in the inferior part representd by bars)
The REUSEHEAT project shows very satisfactory results for the use of this type of technology and the energy saving produced. In addition, heat pumps are considered a renewable energy source (when in addition to using aero-thermal energy they meet certain conditions) and clean and avoid a large percentage of CO2 emissions. There is talk that they could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70%.
CARTIF believes that we ,ust continue to support this type of technology and the innovations that help us to improve them, not only for heat pumps based on aero-thermal energy, but also geo-thermal energy, hydro-thermal energy,etc.
The closing process of a successful project, executed for 7 years continuously (60 months of implementation and almost a year of preparation), always carries a bittersweet feeling.
On the one hand, there is the satisfaction of having achieved the objective, which is none other than reaching the major energy and environmental impacts committed to. On the other hand, in the case of mySMARTLife, where the main beneficiaries are the citizens, this feeling of satisfaction is even greater. But it is also true that there is a certain feeling of melancholy, especially related to the foreseeable lack of contact with the many people from organisations in different countries who have accompanied you throughout this process. It is something like being relieved, happy and satisfied, but at the same time a little sad at having to say goodbye to colleagues and friends with whom it will not be so easy to keep in touch due to the distance. Something difficult to explain, but I’m sure many of you who read this blog have experienced it at some point.
After a few days in which CARTIF has managed to recover from the tremendous effort required to close our mySMARTLife project, as the famous song by Mecano (so appropriate for these dates) says, it is time to take stock of the good and the bad.
mySMARTLife was a project that involved three cities of the size of Nantes in France, Hamburg in Germany and Helsinki in Finland, surrounded by strong innovation ecosystems, which committed to improve energy efficiency by 55% in three districts and to cover the remaining energy demand with at least 54% from renewable energy sources. In addition, they also committed to a massive deployment of electro-mobility actions and to improve and strengthen existing data acquisition and decision-making platforms in the three cities. To this end, the project undertook to design, implement and evaluate 140 actions, which have already been successfully implemented and have leveraged more than 200 million euros of investment, receiving close to 18 million euros of funding from the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme.
CARTIF congratulates itself for having fulfilled this ambitious commitment. The numbers, which are usually cold, in this case allow us to certify the resounding success of the project.
147,054 m2 of heated space have been rehabilitated or built under high energy efficiency criteria. 8,777.59 MWh of net energy have been saved per year in the three districts by the energy efficiency actions deployed and 4,350 electric vehicles have been deployed in the three cities (including 388 electric buses). In short, 33,145 tonnes of CO2 are not emitted annually into the atmosphere in the three cities as a whole. In the local vernacular, that’s a great deal…
This overwhelming success is further complemented by the three energy transition plans in the follower cities, which are already underway, starting the implementation phase of the actions studied in many cases. Such as the district heating in Palencia, the city closest to us, which is already in its implementation phase. As said before, the numbers in this case do reflect the achievements of the 6 cities accompanied by the rest of the project partners.
Before closing mySMARTLife, I would like to mention or highlight some of the most emblematic or innovative actions. In Helsinki, a 3D Energy Atlas was developed to help plan solar actions throughout the city. In Hamburg,hydrogen (H2) was injected into a gas network. For several days, up to 40% hydrogen was injected into the grid. In Nantes, 22 electric buses with a length of 24 metres and a capacity of 150 passengers were designed and deployed. In Hamburg, in addition to deploying 80 electric buses, a complete electrification of a bus depot station for recharging, mainly at night, was carried out. Finally, two electric mini-buses were piloted for the first time in France or Finland under autonomous driving in real traffic conditions. These are just a few examples of the actions deployed by mySMARTLife.
But as in CARTIF we do not take even a minute of rest, we are ready to start new adventures. On the 31st of January, 1st and 2nd of February we start NEUTRALPATH, a project around the theme of Positive Energy Clean Districts, in which we will work with the cities of Zaragoza, Dresden, Istanbul, Vantaa and Ghent. But this will be the subject of a future blog. Stay tuned…
