Climate change is an increasingly visible reality on our planet, affecting millions of people around the world. These changes in climate are clearly recognizable by the increase in temperatures, the decrease in water resources, the sea level rise or the increasingly irregular and torrential precipitation events. The consequences, effects and impacts of these changes in the weather are becoming more frequent and relevant every day, inducing damages of great magnitude and generating a displacement of the population by making the areas in which they lived uninhabitable, with examples such as extreme droughts, floods or desertification. In our day to day, we can see how these changes in the climate manifest themselves. A clear example is the winter that has just started with softer than normal average temperatures and unusual high maximum temperatures for the period of the year.
In this context of climate change, the thermometer continues to break records of increase and it is estimated that in Spain the average temperatures are increasing around 0.3ºC per decade, which gives us an idea of the high rate o warming to whom our country is being subjected and the planet in general. In addition, it must be taken into account that although we manage to reduce the emissions that generate climate change by trying to avoid the consequences it produces, the change trends reflected in the climate variables will continue in the coming decades due to the inertia of the climate system. Faced with such a negative outlok, it is necessary to ask ourselves the following question: how can we contribute to mitigate and reduce the impacts of climate change or adapt to them by generating more resilient territories?
To help us in this fight, mitigation and adaptation strategies are of huge relevance. Mitigation strategies seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, which are ultimately the food of anthropogenic climate change. For their part, adaptation strategies seek to limit the risks derived from climate change, reducing our vulnerabilities. Both strategies are complementary in such a way that, if we do not take mitigation into account, the capacity for adaptation can easily be overwhelmed and developing an adaptation that is not low in emissions is meaningless.
But, what can we do as citizens? We can contribute with small measures such as recycling, the use of public transport or bikes, local commerce that minimizes transport, ecological and sustainable products, all of them helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, adaptation requires great responses that generally must be promoted by the public administrations or organizations that are in charge of land management. Therefore, we must not overlook that the fight against climate change must be an effort of all (citizens, administrations, companies,etc.) integrating as many agents as possible and covering a multisectorial and systemic approach that not lose the social perspective of the problem.
Under this climate change perspective and to promote adaptation, the European Union has launched the Climate Change Adaptation Mission that aims to promote and support the transition towards resilience in Europe at the individual level, cities and regions, both in the private and public sectors as economy, energy, society, etc. Its main objective is to support at least 150 European regions and communities towards climate resilience by 2030. To this end, the mission will help regions and communities to better understand, prepare for and manage their climate risks, seek opportunties, as well as facilitate the implementation of innovative and resilient solutions providing information on the different additional sources of investment.
In a complementary way and to respond to the adaptation needs generated by changes in the climate, it is necessary to provide the entities with a common framework that guarantees a homogeneity of criteria in the conception of climate change. In this sense, the public action against climate change in Spain is coordinated and organized through the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC), which establishes the framework of reference and national coordination for impact assessment initiatives and activities, vulnerability and adaptation. Its main objective is to avoid or reduce present and future damages derived and to build a more resilient economy and society.
This plan that covers the needs at national level establishing the starting point for the development of more detailed strategies at regional or municipal level helping the territories in the acievement of their objectives through the implementation of priority lines of action against the impacts caused by climate change. As a starting point for any adaptation strategy, it is necessary to know in detail how the current and future climate variables (temperature, precipitation, wind, etc.) will be like in order to be able to assess the vulnerability of our territory and promote measures that make it more resilient to climate impacts. As a starting point, the AdapteCCa climate scenario viewer developed by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPAMA) in coordination with the Spanish Office for Climate Change (OECC) and the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) together with the IPCC Interactive Atlas, provide us with relevant data to understand the future climate through different climate projections. All the information they collect allows to obtain an idea of the magnitude of the changes in the future climate to establish the baseline for the evaluation of vulnerability and risk, as well as for the definition of measures for each priority sector identified in each territory. Finally, the implementation of the identified and selected measures must be associated with a monitoring and a follow-up system that enables the achievement of the proposed adaptation objectives to be evaluated.
At CARTIF, we work to help the different public administrations in the development of adaptation plans and strategies in the face of climate change. We must highlight the projects in which we recently work together with GEOCYL Conultoría S.L. in the development of adaptation strategies to climate change for the municipality of Valladolid (EACC_Val project) and the region of Extremadura (EACC_Extremadura project), respectively.
In addition, the RethinkAction project, coordinated by CARTIF will allow us to advance over the effects generated by adaptation and mitigation measures through the development of integrated assessment models that allow the evaluation before implementation of measures in relevant climatic regions of Europe.
The energy sector is undergoing a deep transformation to respond to the need to combat climate change and thus contribute to the sustainability of life onour planet. This is being articulated through the so-called “Energy Transition”, which involves two big transformations in the electricity grid. On the one hand, traditional centralised generation is being replaced by an increasing number of distributed renewable generation plants located closer to the final consumer. In addition, the number of “self-consumers”, i.e. consumers capable of producing renewable energy, mainly photovoltaic, for their own use, is increasing. Secondly, we are witnessing a growth in the demand for electricity, with new needs such as electric vehicles and the air-conditioning of buildings.
All this results ingreater complexity of the electricity grid, especially the distribution grid, but also the transmision grid, because the flow of electricity is no longer unidirectional, but bidirectional. A more flexible management system is essential to make the transmission and distribution of electricity more efficient. Grid operators also need new technologies and tools to ensure a reliable and high quality service. These changes, which are already part of the present, are made possible by the evolution of traditional electricity grids towards smart grids.
The smart grid concept refers to a new feature of the electricity grid: in addition to transporting energy, it also transports data. To achieve this, digital technologies are needed to facilitate two-way communication between the user and the grid, IT and home automation tools to manage demand flexibility and distributed generation and storage resources, as well as the necessary technology and equipment capable of responding to volatile renewable generation.
One of the threats to guaranteeing an adequate and quality supply to the different players in the medium and low voltage network is faults. It is necessary to have the necessary means to locate them quicklly, givinig continuity of supply after a reconfiguration of the network, provided that this is useful to alleviate the effects of the fault, in the shortest possible time.
There are two indices for measuring the quality of supply in an electricity system: SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index) and SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index). The SAIFI index takes into account the number of unavailabilities per user, while the SAIDI index takes into account the cumulative time of unavailability. These unavailabilities are generated as a result of various types of faults, the most frequent of which are earth and phase faults, the former being the most frequent.
When an earth fault occurs in a medium-voltage distribution network, the circuit breaker of one of the outlets of the high-voltage to medium-voltage transformer station shall trip by menas of the earth fault protection.
Subsequently, and in order to rule out that the fault is transient, the reclosing function shall operate, closing the circuit breaker. If the fault persists, tripping shall be repeated until the number of reclosings provided has been exhausted. If the fault is permanent, the affected part of the network will be out of service and it will be necessary to locate the fault and reconfigure the network in order to continue providing service to as many users as possible.
Traditionally, follwing the detection of a permanent fault by the telecontrol equipment, it is possible to carry out a remote reconfiguration operation from the control centre. This operation is carried out by an operator, following a defined protocol,and can take several minutes at best.
A modern, automated network will allow this protocol to be carried out without operator intervention, automatically between the telecontrol equipment. This network feature is known as self-healing, and allows the network to reconfigureitself autonomously in the event of a permanent fault, without the manual intervention of the control center. This significantly speeds up the time it takes to restore the power supply.
CARTIF has developed, within the framework of the INTERPRETER project (H2020, GA#864360), an assistance tool aimed at medium and low voltage grid operators. This tool, known as GCOSH-TOOL, helps to evaluate different scenarios by applying diferrent action protocols in the event of the appereance of one or more faults in the network. Its operation is based on proposing a seqeunce of optimisation problems with different constraints and objective functions, which allows the power to be delivered to each customer to be calculated, ensuring that the demand is met. To do this, a reconfiguration of the grid will be necessary to ensure electricity supply to the largest possible number of users in the scenario chosen by the operator based on technical and economic objectives.
The smart grids of the future will be more flexible and reliable than traditonal grids and will provide a higher quality of electricity supply to users. They will be connected in real time, receiving and providing information that will allow them to optimise their own electricity consumption and improve the operation of the overall system (active demand management). On the other hand, the trend towards distributed generation from renewable sources leads to a structure in the form of interconnected microgrids that will have the capacity to automatically reconfigure themselves in the event of any breakdown. The rapid evolution of technology is allowing these changes to take place very quickly, so that the so-called energy transition is becoming a reality, and we already have the infrastructure in place to reduce CO2 emissions, thus helping to curb climate change.
Cogeneration refers to the simultaneous production of electricity and heat, our two main basic energetic needs. The benefits of these technologies are multiple:
It´ s 40% more efficient than producing electricity and heat separately.
Together with these energetic save, the CO2 emissions and the generation costs are lower.
It can take advantage of renewable sources such as biomass and biogas.
It improves system security bu generating the requried amount of electricity and heat and absorbing the implied variability of renewable generation from wind and solar.
The transport and distribution costs are reduced, generally the energy it´ s consume at the same place where it is produce.
In addition to the fact that cogeneration has as an objective covering the propper energy needs , we can see that, according to the Report of the Spanish Electric System elaborated by The Spanish Electricity Grid corresponding to 2019, it is able to cover almost an 12% of the spanish demand with just a 5% of the participation in the national installed power. At a european level, the cogeneration provides an 11% of the electricity consume and a 15% of the heat.
Also the European Commision recognise the need of the presence of the cogeneration in the energy system, mentioning in the Energy Efficiency Directive that “cogeneration of high efficiency has a significative potential for saving primary energy in the Union” and the need that “the member states promote the introduction of measures and procedures to promote the installations of cogeneration with a total nominal thermic power under 5mw with the aim of promtoing the generation of distributed energy”.
Even taking into account all the benefits mentioned, we can only find these type of technolgies in industrial areas or big buildings of the terciary sector. Due to that, an area with a high potential is the development of micro-cogeneration, that is to say, low power cogeneration systems (under 50kW) that generate the heat and the electricity needed for covering the energy needs of residential buildings. This aspect is key both for the development of the local energy communities in which the figure of the passive consumer is blurred and for the consecution of one of the big environmental objectives, the climate neutrality.
Inside the nowadays cogeneration systems, we can find two big groups:
Conventional internal combustion engines coupled to an electric generator and from which heat is recovered from the exhaust gases and cooling systems. They usually operate usinig natural gas or diesel as fuel, reaching overall efficiencies of 80-90%.
Microturbine systems consisting of an open cycle gas turbine in which air is drawn in from the atmosphere, compressed by a rotary compressor and fed into the combustion chamber and then used for expansion in a turbine. The electric energy it is obtaines from an alternator, meanwhile the heat it´ s recover from the scape gases. They reach overall yields among the 90%. The fundamental difference compared with the previous ones is that turbines are designed for function in a stationary regime, meanwhile engines allow a wider regulation. Also, the temperature of the scape gases of the turbines is higher, being normally around 300-400ºC. The fuel mostyl used is natural gas, but in this case is possible using other more sustainable such as biogas.
As we have seen, most of nowadays systems used fossil fuels, what it is not adequate according to the environmental commitments adquired. In 2018 just the 4% of the energy generated through cogeneration proceed from renewable sources such as biofuels and residues (The energy in Spain 2018, MITECO)
Fortunately, exists technologies both in the market and in the development phase focused on covering needs. In first place, we can call the technology of hybrid photovoltaic generation, able of generate both electricity and hot water of low temperature (60-70ºC) usable in building air-conditioning systems. The infrastructure need for the installation of these collectors is not very different from that used in the usual installation of photovoltaic panels, including the necessary piping for the water inlet and outlet.
Another technology that is experiencing great growth due to its strategic nature is the hydrogen or fuel cell. This system take advantage of electrochemistry processes to transform a fuel, the hydrogen, and a oxidising agent, the oxigen in the air, in a electric current and heat. The particularity of hydrogen as fuel is that present a huge energy density, it can move through ducts similar to natural gas (although under special conditions) and it could be generated from the electrolysis of water usin renewable energy sources.
Source: https://www.cnh2.es/pilas-de-combustible/
Of course, the technology mention could be combined with other for multiplying their possibilities: heat pumps both powered by the electricity generated and using the heat generated to increase their performance, hybridisation together with storage systems that allow for intelligent management, etc.
CARTIF participate in several projects that integrate cogeneration systems in residential environments:
SUNHORIZON: has as an objective showing that the propper combination of technologies such as solar panels (photovoltaic, hybrid, thermal) and heat pumps (thermal compressor, adsorption, reversible) manage with a controller with predictive capacities allow saving energy, maximize the use of renewables, increase the self-consumption, reduce the energy bill and reduce the CO2 emissions.
REGENBy2: we contribute to the development of a new integrated energy plant, able of convert any type of thermal source of renewable energy, of low or high temperature, in electricity, heating and/or cooling simultaneously.
HysGRID+: its objective is to promote the cooperation of spanish technology centres with a high level of complementarity with the aim of research and develop new technological solutions that enable the creation of local energy communities (LEC) with a positive net balance of high efficiency and based in hybrid systems of renewable generation and storage. In the context of this project, CARTIF, has been able of installing two test benches: one for testing heat pumps of up to 100kW thermal, and other for characterize the behaviour of hybrid PVT solar panels.
H24NewAge: we develop advance technologies throughout all the hydrogen value chain for finally create a infrastrcutures network for giving service to the companies and as a demonstration of the develop hydrogen technologies. The final aim is that the project became a reference for the spanish business network facilitating a transfer of bidirectional and adaptable knowledge. Other action is the research into the application of fuel cells in residential microgeneration.
The road transport is the main source of particles emissions in the urban environment and one of the most importantat at a global level. Consciouss of the gravity of the problem , the European Union established limits, each time more restrictive, for the scape emissions of the internal combustion motors in new vehicles, through the european regulation about emissions (EURO regulation), that vehicles manufacturers are so afraid of. This regulation focused in the vehicles, and other aimed to the control the emissions produced in the industry and in the thermal power plants of electric generation, have made possible that the concentration of particles in urban environments have being reduced in a notorious way in the last 15 years. It is fair to say, that part of those reduction has also been due to the increase use of the renewable energies, as for example the eolic, photovoltaic or thermal-solar energy. Biomass, on the other hand, eventhough it is a renewable energy source with a near-zero carbon footprint, contributes to the emission of particles due to the combustion process that allows its energetic exploitation. At last, nuclear energy, that in the next weeks it will start to be cosnider “green energy” by the European Commission, it could contribute in an efficient way not only to the reduction of the CO2 emissions, but also to the particle emissions.
Enethough, as it is said, the actual situation is better than the one 15 years before, it is not less true that with relative frequency particles concentration limits estalished by the World Health Organisation (10 μg/m3 for particles <2.5 μm) are overcome in much european urban cores.
How are nanoparticles classified and which are their associated risks?
The atmospheric particles, independently of their natural or antropogenic origin, are classified in thick particles PM10 (2.5-10 μm), thin PM2.5 (0.1-2.5 μm) and ultrathin PM0,1 (<0.1μm). According to the WHO, the thick particles PM10 can penetrate and lodge deeply into the lungs, meanwhile the thin particles PM2.5 assume a higher risk, they can cross the pulmonary barrier and enter into the blood system. The ultrathin particles PM0.1 are able of penetrating vital organs such as the liver or the brain, causing inflamatory and oxidative processes, with still unknown effects.
Numerous scientific studies carried out in the last two decades relation the short-time effects of the particles concentration increase with increase in the daily mortality and hospital admissions. Other studies advise about the high content of Polyciclic Aromatic Hydrocarbours (PAHs) that are found bonded to the particles fraction PM2.5 provenient from the combustion processes. At least 13 of the compounds that formed the family of the PAHs have been recognised as carcinogens by the WHO. This same organisation said that, in addition to cancer, the fraction of 2.5 particles caused cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses being the cause of 400,000 premature deaths only in Europe.
Source: https://www.elnorte.com
What are Non-Exhaust Emissions (NEE) and what is their contribution to road transport emissions?
Once introduced the problematic produced by the particle emissions, as well as their sources, we will focused in the NEE particles, that is to say, those emited by vehicles but that are non-provenient from the gas scape. These particles are originated throguh the wear and tear produced by the friction between pillows and brake discs, and between the wheels and the road surface.
In contrast to what happens with the emissions of particles in the scape gases, knowadays it doesn´ t exist any law that limits the emission of NEE particles, in fact, most part of the society isn´ t even consciouss of their existence.
But, the contribution of the NEE particles is representative if we comparewith the one of the scape gases?
Surprising as it may seem, the contribution of NEE particles it´ s not only representative, but since some years ago it is clearly superior. Data published by the Inventory of National Atmospheric Emissions of United Kingdom reveal that meanwhile the scape particles have been reduce in a notorious way in the last years, NEE particles has increase and are expected to continue to do so in the future. The source mentioned before states that, from the rimary particles emited by trnsport by road, the 605 of the PM2.5 and the 73% of the PM10 were due to NEE particles (measures carried out in United Kindom during 2016). Those percentages continue increasing as the scape emissions decrease, as it represents the graphic elaborated by the NAEI.
Source: https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk
And what happens with the zero emissions vehicles?
The pollution by particles is specially problematic in the urban environments, therefore it is consider that electromobility can help decisively to fight the problem. However, due to the height of batteries, these vehicles have a notorious mass superior to the one of a equivalent car with a motor of interior combustion, which implies larger NEE particles emissions due to the wear and tearof the wheels and of the surface of the road. These larger emissions are somehow compensate by the smaller emissions produced by the dual regenerative/mechanical braking system for electric and hybrid vehicles. At present the net balance between the reduction of braking particles and the inrease of particles produced by the road and wheels of electric vehicles it is not quantified, but what is clear, is that these vehicles produced a level of NEE particles emissions, at least of the same order of magnitudeas the one of conventional cars.
Therefore, the label of “zero emissions” is in a way, if not in its entirety, misleading for the consumer. Evenmore if it is take in count that the 40% of electric energy generated in Spain in 2019, came from thermal power plants.
CARTIF research to reduce the emissions of NEE particles
CARTIF, consciouss of the problem of these particle emissions, has participated in a project proposal of the european programme Horizon Europe focused on study the magnitude, causes, efects of the emissions of NEE particles, as of develop solutions that avoid, or at least reduce, the emissions of them. Those proposal is focused on fleets of delivery vehicles and public transport vehicles such as buses and subways, taking place part of the field tests in the city of Valladolid. If such a project is finally financed by the European Commission, CARTIF will devote its best efforts to the search of solutions that allow reducing the emissions of NEE particles, a problem which detrimental effects are well known, despite being ignored by the majority of the society.
What does it mean the tears of Alon Sharma during the closure of the COP26 of Glasgow?
Only one week separate us from the celebration of the last Conference of the United Nations about the Climate Change (COP26), and in my mind has been recorded the downcast image of Alok Sharma, president of the COP26, during the closure of the height. Why? After many comings and goings, the world representatives haven´ t been able to reach an agreement about the emissions that the world activity should generate for not destroying our planet and reaching being sustainable.
In our hand is the solution, and for that we should continue working through a carbon neutral energy transition if we really pretend to reach the objectives of the Climate Pact in 2050. So much sectors are affected by this process of decarbonization, in which the definition of new production strategies and use of digital enablers technologies position themselves as key elements through a reduction of carbon emissions to the atmosphere, promoting the move about through a more efficient and less pollutant model.
The building sector is not alienated to this problematic. The reports of the European Union evidence that the building sector is the responsable of about 40% of the energy consume and 36% of the CO2 emissions in their operation phase, that is, during the use phase of the building already built. On the other hand, almost the 70% of the existent houses in Europe aren´ t energy-efficient as they present deficient or scarce energy conservation measures focused for that purpose. From this 70%, the 30% are houses with more than 50 years of antiquity that require of several rehabilitation interventions and improvements in their structure or management in order to achieve the energy consume values in accordance with the provisions of the European directive of Energy Efficiency in Buildings (EPBD- Energy Performance of Buildings Directive – 2010/31/UE, and his amenden version of the directive 2018/844/EU).
In consequence, and with the purpose of contributing efficiently to the global climatic objective, the existing building stock must experience a deep transformation and become more intelligent and more efficient. On the other hand, meanwhile the implementation of new skills and technologies are relatively easy to integrate in the new buildings and constructive processes, pushed by the increasing need of the digitalization of the sector through the 4.0 Construction, it is still necessary improving the solutions research that allows reducing the energy consume and increasing the efficiency of buildings and infrastructures already existing in the city.
Below this context, the implementation of enablers technologies that allow to encourage and increasing the efficient use of energy at the edification is fundamental, understanding these technologies as solutions that allow reducing the quantity of energy that is required by a building for been construct or rehabilitated,inhabited, maintained and demolished. Focusing the spotlight in the phase that occupies the biggest number of years inside the building life cycle, this is, the use phase, ocupation and maintenance of the same, we will reach an efficient building energeticly speaking, if we are able of providing thermic, luminic,air quality comfort, etc. to their inhabitants with the less use of energy possible, and in consequence with less green house gases emissions and a bigger economic saving.
These enablers technologies can be classified into 4 cathegories according to the building element on which we want to act for improving their efficiency or energy performance, including the user of the building itself.
1. Energy conservation measures:
Inside this group are encompassed all those measures that improve the physic structure of the building, either by:
The implementation of passive measures, as the insulation of the facade or changing windows.
The implementation of active measures, as the installation of a new boiler more efficient or that use a fuel less pollutant.
The installation of renewable solutions, as solar panels.
The installation of conventional instrumentation (sensors, actuators and controllers) and intelligent instrumentation (as thermostats or intelligent counters).
Although the fisrt ones are already widely spread between the owners community, in several cases they are not choosen with a endorsed criteria because of the energy and economic savings calculations. Are also not usually applied in a combined way, allowing obtaining more flexibility in the generation and consume of energy (even going as far as self-consumption), mainly if we put into play solutions of energy generation based in renewable sources. At CARTIF we have been investigating and providing solutions to this problem for several years, through the digitalization (based in BIM), automatization and optimization of the design process of rehabilitation solutions in buildings and districts. These thematics are covered in projects such as OptEEmAL or BIM-SPEED.
2. Connected systems and devices
It is not enough with having instrumentation devices or automatization networks in our buildings (including legacy systems or already existent in the house, such as domestic appliances or other informatic systems), but that such devices should be connected to a network such as Internet to make them accessible in a remote way and offer the possibility of exchange information and being controlled. In this domain operates the famous Internet of Things (IoT). Its purpose is to offer the capacity of access to all the devices of the house to be able to collect information about their signal and status, and at the same time could storage those information in persistent and secure means. The information is power, and through the connectivity solutions and the IoT monitorization we will have at our disposal the data about the actual status of our building and with the capacity of making fundamental decisions. This is the base through the achievement of the named “Intelligent Building”. CARTIF, through its projects BaaS,BREASER, E2VENT or INSITER implements several solutions of signal monitorization as a base to the generation of management systems and building control or BEMS (Buildiing Energy Management Systems).
3. Advance strategies for the management, operation, flexibility and maintenance of the building
Once the information about the behaviour and status of the house is in our power, can be raised and develop building control strategies able to react in response to the user needs (reactive building) or even to anticipate the needs of the same (proactive and intelligent building). In this second case, the implementation of techniques and algorithms of Artifical Intelligence, powered by the data previously monitorized, are essential for learning and capture the knowledge both of the behaviour of the building and of their occupants. This will make available services with expert knowledge to be able to control and optimize the behaviour of the building, predicting their possible thermic and electric demand and offering flexibility and storage solutions, or anticipating possible failures of their energy systems, between other possibilities. This puzzle piece is fundamental for the achievement of the “Autonomous and Intelligent Building“, by making the building into an entity capable of making decisions without the intervention of their inhabitants, but learning from their behaviour. The help decision-making and auto-management systems of the buildings are based on intelligent and advance strategies, as it is about covering in projects such as MATRYCS, Auto-DAN or frESCO in which CARTIF take part nowadays.
4. Training and awareness of the users/inhabitants of the building
At last, but not for that reason less important, the user of the building (inhabitant, manager, owner or operator) presents a fundamental role in the fight towards the increase of the energy efficiency. The buildings are created for and to the inhabitants, and guarantee their comfort both thermal, luminic and environmental (ventilation, air quality) is fundamental. But nor just any procedure will do to achieve this welfare. Here is where the user of the building plays a essential role, not only showing their needs and preferences, but also learning good practices and improving their behaviour when using the energy systems, domestic appliances and other devices of their houses. The information that now we collect from the buildings, valorized with the Big Data and Artificial Intelligence techniques, and made available to the user, will allow the user to know how the building behaves, how much CO2 emits and what it costs to achieve welfare. Put in full context, the user could improve the way we operate and live in their houses, promoting the efficient use of the energy systems that are under their control. CARTIF projects such as SocialRES and LocalRES tries to involve the citizens through the energy transition.
The combination of all these technologies, capable of transforming our buildings in ones more intelligent and proactive, and our users into trained and informed interveners, will make our building stock more efficient and sustainable.
All of the above is focused in reaching that our buildings, mainly the already existent, could behaviour in a more efficient way, and that they can thereby contribute to reducing energy use.
But, what happens if despite of our effort we are not able to reduce the CO2 emissions and other green house gases?
The reality as od today is that the global temperature of the planet continues increasing and the expected climatic pact still seems far from being achieved. As a consequence, we have not only to focus our investigation efforts, as we have been doing in CARTIF, in which our buildings consume less energy, and thus less CO2 and other green house gases is emitted for their production, but in new architectural designs capables of coping with extreme climatic conditions, that is, hotter summers, colder winters, more abundant precipitations… The future houses should therefore be well insulated, being self-sufficient in generation-consume of energy, being capable of manage and drain more water, and including green solutions. We cannot ignore this challenge in the not too distant future.
As a Technology Centre devoted to R&D&I and at the head of projects whose main goal is the innovation, in CARTIF we have been active in the clear evolution of the challenges or objectives that the European Commission has set to our cities and urban environments.
During this journey, our cities have transitioned over different concepts or topics from which we can highlight the next ones: they have been asked to be efficient, be smart, be circular, develop districts with positive energy balance and, more recently, to be climate neutral.
In this post, we intend to put in order all this evolution and clarify the reasons for all these ambitious objectives.
The beginning: near zero-energy buildings, districts and urban areas
The departure of our trip started with the last calls of the 7th EU Innovation Framework Programme (known as FP7). During this period, in between 2010 and 2013, the Commission recognised in their policies as the Directive 20/20/20, the EPBD or through the decisive impetus to support successful initiatives such as the Covenant of Mayors, that the European cities, being huge consumers of energy, could help to alleviate, mitigate and even compensate, the growing energy needs that the member states were suffering.
This high and increasing need of energy supply was mainly due to daily direct or indirect business activities developed in the cities and began to raise a clear problem of stability of the European energy system, highly dependent of a fossil-based energy generation, increasingly exhausted and expensive, as well as highly polluting.
The EU innovation programmes were of course not disconnected to this problematic. Among the main objectives of those, in that moment incipient calls, some new urban transformation projects where launched. The Commission challenged us to make the buildings of our cities more efficient and smarter, to use clean energy sources and also, to work on the energy systems preferably at a district scale, considering a district or neighbourhood as the perfect representative of a fully functional urban unit and the perfect environment for the implementation of a range of solutions capable to provide a higher impact. And finally, to reach these objectives in a reasonable but short period of time.
These incipient calls for innovation projects were complemented with regulatory aspects, such as the request of individual metering systems of energy consumption to promote energy savings in common energy systems or the need of implement digital systems in the construction sector (such as BIM technology) with the objective of reaching a more efficient and error-free construction process (first in public buildings and later in the rest). These concrete measures tried to accompany, as enablers, the necessary transformation of the construction sector, the energy sector and therefore our districts and cities, increasing the low renovation rate. With regards to smart and efficient mobility, incipient projects promoting the electro-mobility or intelligent transport systems in urban areas completed these firsts (and certainly far now in time) initiatives.
The next step: urban regeneration and renaturing
The next stop of our journey met with the beginning of the recently finished innovation framework programme, the very well-known Horizon2020 or H2020, operational since 2013 and that called for projects until 2020. Although several projects are still in its full execution regime, there will be no more calls for projects under this programme. The Commission continued this process through the whole H2020, emphasizing the need to deploy large-scale pilot projects in a more systematic and holistic way of transformation: the so-called urban regeneration and lighthouse projects approach. These projects meant a real (r)evolution due to the need to avoid working in silos, integrate different stakeholders of the local innovation ecosystems around the cities and with a clear leadership of the municipalities and of not from the industry providers. Therefore, the integration of solutions belonging to different economic sectors, such as the retrofitting of the built stock, efficient new construction, clean energy systems, ICT solutions (including urban decision-support platforms), electro-mobility, new governance models and urban planning strategies were promoted in these projects. To meet such ambitious goals, the municipal leadership in this process in co-creation with the citizens was absolutely essential.
Obviously, this clear “jump” towards a holistic urban regeneration concept led to more systemic and ambitious projects, in a public-private financial scheme tailored to the local business ecosystem when possible and with the objective to be potentially scalable and replicable at different contexts but always with the main focus on the benefit of the citizens.
Moreover, the European Commission also raised us the need of returning the nature to our urban environments, as a main element to create healthier and more friendly urban spaces for the citizens, improving their life quality direct and indirectly as well as their perception of their urban environment.
The penultimate step in the way: positive energy districts
A new twist of the screw to this concept of urban transformation came up in the last calls of H2020. The design and deployment of the so-called positive energy districts (PED). These initiatives, that started in 2018 towards 2020, were more specific, proposed us to transform existing districts or complete neighbourhoods in urban units that generate an energy surplus in its annual balance. This means that after balancing the energy flows between exported and imported energy from and to the district in a complete annual basis, our district should consume less energy of the one it generates. The underlying objective under this incipient, ambitious and ground-breaking concept is to implement this PED concept in the neighbourhoods that have a better potential of implementing fossil-fuel free clean energt systems and, therefore, reducing drastically the global energy needs of the city. Thus, this surplus of some PEDs in a city could compensate other neighbourhoods in which, because of their characteristics, a high level of energy reduction is not feasible.
This simple-to-explain but extremely-complex-to-implement concept requires the deployment of innovative business models, such as the energy communities, to ensure that the surplus of energy is managed and shared among the different actors involved, that can range from individual owners or tenants of residential buildings to large companies owning big shopping malls or offices buildings. This model has to face difficulties, not only due to technical requirements but also due to the existing local, regional or national normative or regulation.
All these projects have enabled our cities to reach a first and important stage in the process of transformation of our cities, generating a huge amount of experiences both positive and lessons learned.
Particularly focused on CARTIF experiences, we could highlight the case of Valladolid, Spain. CARTIF has successfully accompanied Valladolid in this transition, through the deployment of a relevant number of innovation projects already in place. Projects such as R2CITIES, CITyFiED, REMOURBAN and UrbanGreenUp have transformed our city and province.
In Valladolid, the journey started with several buildings of the Cuatro de Marzo neighbourhood that were energy retrofitted. The trip continued with the FASA district that benefitted from a complete regeneration accompanied by the deployment of multiple mobility actions across all the city (45 electric vehicles, 22 recharging points, 5 electric buses). This trip was complemented by the renaturing of diverse urban spaces that they are still on the move across the whole city area. A parallel trip was carried out in the Torrelago neighbourhood in Laguna de Duero, a very close to Valladolid village, that was transformed into a more efficient and sustainable, being also in their moment, the biggest energy retrofitting intervention in Europe.
The last and definitive challenge: the climate neutrality
However, despite providing great individual results, all this (r)evolution hasn´t been enough to cope the most important challenge we have faced in our existence as human beings: the strong need to mitigate the effects of climate change. It is necessary a second twist of screw to deal with it with decision and optimism.
In line with the recent approved Green Deal in which the European Commission established as an objective for Europe to be the first climate neutral continent in 2050, our cities have to progress on the same way to be climate neutral. But, with their exemplary power and potential, they have to be as soon as they can.
Again, the EU innovation programmes are aligned to these global policies and as a result of it, the brand-new innovation programme Horizon Europe has created in their words “a new way to bring concrete solutions to some of our greatest challenges”, the innovative Horizon Europe Missions.
The Missions are multi-disciplinary actions launched with the aim of reaching an ambitious and at the same time quantifiable objective (the mission). Moreover, they have to be deployed in a specific timeframe and with the final goal of achieving a big impact in the society. Inside the 5 missions recently launched by the European Commission, it appears the Climate Neutral and Smart Cities mission, totally aligned with the objectives raised by the 2030 Agenda, the SDG and the EU Green Deal.
This Cities mission has raised as an objective to reach an extremely ambitious and complex goal: speed up the necessary transformation process and reach, at least, “100 climate neutral cities in 2030, by and for the citizens”. These 100 cities shall be pioneers and exemplars for the rest, leading the way of the necessary process of systemic transformation. The pivotal element of this process is the Climate City Contract (CCC), a new planning, governance and financial element that will regulate the objectives, stakeholders’ involvement and governance processes that will allow reaching those climate neutrality objectives in the cities that adhere to the process. The development of CCCs requires a deep understanding of the local contexts, the development of a good planning structure to try to secure the necessary funds, which does not have to come only from public funds. Most on the contrary, the access to private capital is essential.
CARTIF is part of the consortium of NetZeroCities1, the EU Cities Mission Platform that will support the Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission in the process of co-creation, co-design, implementation and evaluation of the climate city contract in EU cities. In NetZeroCities, CARTIF will make available all the experience gained throughout the participation in city regeneration and transformation projects to the cities participating in the initiative. CARTIF will collaborate in the concrete definition of the contents of the Climate City Contract, will define the technological solutions necessary to realize the systemic transformation and, also, will participate in the definition of the indicators framework that will allow to follow the evolution of the initiative and the degree of accomplishment to the objective of reaching 100 pioneer cities being climate neutral in 2030.
In CARTIF we are ready to be part of this process, ¿ARE YOU READY?
1 Horizon2020 Green Deal topic 1.2. Grant agreement number: 101036519
