It is well know that more than a third of the total final energy consumed in the European Union is consumed in residential and tertiary sector buildings. For this reason, in recent years, various directives and calls for proposals have tried to promote the renovation of buildings under energy efficiency criteria.
One of the directives in this field is the EPBD (2018/844 Energy Performance of Buildings Directive). This standard is the main European directive aimed at helping to reduce energy consumption and increase energy efficiency in buildings. This directive introduces the energy certificate as an official document that includes objective information about the energy characteristics of a property or building (you can learn more about energy certificates in our post ” Are energy performance certificates really useful?”). The information provided by these certificates (mainly energy demand and consumption, as well as associated CO2 emissions) is a valuable source of information to know the state of the buildings and thus be able to propose appropriate measures for the improvement of these buildings. Certification tools validated by a certification body are used to generate these certificates. You can check the tools validated in the case of Spain and technical documents that have been recognised by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge and by the Ministry of Development in Spain and that can be used to support the building energy certification process. In these tools, the building information is introduced and the certification values are automatically calculated.
In addition to the validated energy certification tools on the market, there are many tools for modelling and simulating the behaviour of buildings. This is the starting point for the design of building renovation projects, since before the selection of the measures that could improve their consumption and emission parameters, a quantitative assessment of the building stock as realistically as possible is necessary. However, most of the tools available on the market works on a small scale (building,house,premises,etc.) and the generation and simulation of models for grouos of buildings (districts or cities) is a huge task. Undoubtedly, the problem of scale is one of the weak points of current tools when analysing districts or cities.
In CARTIF, for years, we have been working on the automatic generation of models to be able to characterise as automatically as possible the buildings of a certain location (district, municipality and even region) by calculating demand and consumption values using public information sources (cadastre and catalogue of constructive elements mainly) and different calculation engines. In addition, it has been proven that one of the fundamental aspects is certainly the addequate presentation of the results in an attractive, interactive visualisation that is able to provide all relevant information.
As a result of several projects in this line, CARTIF has designed and developed the visualisation tool GIS4ENER that offers the visualisation of several approaches:
(1) The estimation of demand calculation based on the automation of the CE3X certification tool for the calculation of large-scale buildings (neighbourhood or city)
(2) The generation of estimated values of demand, consumption and CO2 emissions through the application of automatically generated typologies with the study of the results reflected in real Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). It also allows the results of both approaches to be compared with these EPCs.
You can access to a demo of the GIS4ENER tool. In this demo the functionalities of the tool are presented with results obtained for the municipality of Tordesillas in the province of Valladolid (Spain).
At the moment the tool has been tested in several municipalities but it has the potential to be applied in any municipality in Spain, except those located in Navarra and the Basque Country.
There are many user groups that could benefit directly from this tool. Among them: regulatory bodies; public administrations; consultancies and energy companies; engineers, architects and urban planners; and construction companies. Our tool would allow to obtain a mapping of energy demand and consumption (as well as CO2 emissions) associated with buildings in a district or region, in much shorter time compared to obtaining the same with conventional methods. Undoubtedly the simplification of this step could bring a great benfit to al these users in their energy planning processes at various scales, development of strategic and business plans in certain districts or cities.
From CARTIF, we will continue to work on the research and development of tools that can continue to help reduce the impact of human beings on the environment.
There are two things that have nothing to do with each other but that in real, they have to: the perplexity of a roe deer in the foothills of the Torozos hills when she founds a fence surrounding a photovoltaic park and that the 64%1 of the Spanish people do not know if our electrical supply contract is from a free or a regulated market.
The roe deer ignores the fact that the place where he walks is going to be subjected to radical changes. Tens of thousands of hectares are going to be covered with photovoltaic panels and closed by fences. We will have to see how this will afect to biodiversity, what will become of the bustards and of the foxes that walks throguh those places and if roe deers will learn to see fences before they colide with them.
But we have to take in count that human activity will be affected. All those hectares will be excluded from agriculture, shepherding will be limited and the landscape will be radically transformed, what could affect to local business of the rural tourism. In exchange of this destruction, energy will be generated without emitting greenhouse gases, energy that also will be cheap and that will help to decrease the price resulting from the daily market matching. But the sun does not usually shine at night, at least in our latitude, and what could happen with the electricity price and with the electric system stabilisation from the time of sunset or the days without sun is something that we will have to talk about in other moment.
Spanish consumers may be just as unaware as the roe deer, because it seems that manyof us are not informed about the possibility of choosing between a regulated rate and non-regulated one, and surely we are far less conscious about the changes that decarbonization of the electric system brings.
This situation of unknowledge raises the fear that it is going to be hard to let people know that they have in their hands a powerful weapon for combating the problems that could appear as a consequence of the massive introduction of renewable energies.
It is the flexibility or capacity of consuming electricity at different times than initially desired without having a loss of comfort or utility. To complicate things further, the household consumers could take better advantage of their own flexibility if they offer it on a joint basis. And this offer should be made in energy local markets, still non-existent, but already in development.
To imagine that a consumer that does not know if he has a free rate or a regulated one may become involved in the energy local market seems harder to achieve than a herd of roe deers jumping the fences of a photovoltaic park.
Several things are required for demand flexibility to be useful. On the one hand, it is necessary that all flexible electricity-consuming assets, such as air conditioning, should be able to accept external signals that allow regulating its operation automatically. Also, it is necessary that control systems that generates these signals are available and acting in an aggregated manner on a significative number of air conditioning systems, to mention a flexible load. In addition, it is necessary to define business models that will allow users to be remunerated for their flexibility. And finally, rules and regulations must be developed to define new market agents, such as the recently created independent aggregators, and to regulate the consumer participation in the new local electricity markets.
But all of this is not going to be possible without a change of mind. Consumers have to realize that there are ways to actively participate in the electricity system that go beyond switching companies when the bill seems too high. One of these ways could be energy communities, which are already opening the door to collective self-consumption and will hopefully soon also open the door to flexible, consumer-centered demand-side management.
Perhaps these communities allow the consumer to adapt to the new electricity system in the same way that roe deers of Torozos hills will have to adapt to a new environment full of unfamiliar things.
When we hear energy efficiency, we always think in improving productive process in facories where we work, in the means of transport we use to move… but never in daily chores in our home. Actions as common as choosing an appliance or the cooking way, establish the degree of our awareness with energy efficiency at homes.
Reflecting on this aspect, these common activities are associated with energy consumption, and therefore, any action aimed at making them more efficient will affect the consumption of our houses. In addition, this concept takes on special relevance in the current context of a growing escalation in the prices of the energy we consume, which is proposed to last over time.
Some measures imply an economic investment, which in many cases presupposes a negative attitude, although we need a reflection on them or a good awareness campaign about it. For example, there are few homes with an incandescent bulb, and the use of bulbs with LED technology is already very common. In the same way, progress in being made in the introduction of more efficient electrical appliance in our homes. These are classified with a letter (A,A+ …) which indicates the consumption of the equipment. Although those that consumes less tend to have higher cost, it must be considered that over time this investment is compensated with a lower cost of electricity.
But not all these soluions that improve our energy efficiency necesssarily imply an economic cost. Thus, for example, we can save energy by acting on:
The control of the heating and cooling temperature setpoints, maintaining adequate comfort values, and although, currently, we are more aware, surely, we all know homes where tenants usually find themselves in winter with summer clothes because they prefer to select a higher temperature setpoint than necessary.
The way we air out our homes. It is not necessary to do it for a long period of time, as is very common to see, and to carry it out at the appropriate times of the day (example: in winter, when the outside temperature is higher or in summer, in the early hours). This measure, complemented by a proper use of the blinds,opening them in sunny hours in winter and closing them in those periods in summer, allows a considerable reduction in air conditioning consumption to be achieved. It is true that with the current pandemic situation and the COVID19 measures to increase the ventilation of closed places, it is difficult to apply efficiency.
When cooking, trying to take advantage of residual heat from glass-ceramic hobs by “turning of the fire” a few minutes before finishing cooking or planning our menus and taking advantages of the ignition of ovens to bake several dishes.
Turning off lights in areas where you do not stay, or disconnecting standby equipment that is not going to be used for a long periods of time or at night.
Wash properly, using the economic programs of both washing machines and dishwashers, and preferably do it at full load, which not only saves energy but also water, a good in many cases scarce.
These and other small measures are a good starting point to save energy in our homes. We have to think that not being efficient does not only mean a higher energy expenditure or an increase in our electricity and gas bill, but it also means a damage to our society and the environment that surrounds us.
At CARTIF, we investigate in many areas of energy efficiency in buildings, developing multiple projects in this field, and we consider that the energy awareness and training of the end users of buildings, even in measures as simple as those indicated, is an important aspect and it has repercussions in progress and social benefit for all.
It is a reality that the building stock, not only in Spain, but in Europe in general is outdated. Although this can be a positive indication that cities have years and history, and buildings can be heritage with high historical value, the reality is also that a large part of them are not energy efficient. Approximately 85% of European buildings were built before 2001 (according to the Renovation Wave Strategy document)
The specific regulation on thermal insulation of the building envelope appear for the first time around the 70sm which means that buildings over 50 years old (more than 40%) were built without any requirement on energy performance. In general, buildings are responsible for 40% of total energy consumption in the EU, and for 36% of greenhouse gas emissions. It must be taken into account that the current regulations for new construction are strict enough in terms of energy efficiency and emissions (through theEnergy Performance of Buildings Directive, the EPBD): since 2019 it is mandatory that all new public buildings be nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (nZEB), and, since the end of last year (2020), it is mandatory for all new buildings. Therefore, the focus is now on meeting better energy efficiency standards in the rest of the building stock.
The COVID-19 crisis that we are experiencing has also put the focus on the buildings, which have become an office for teleworking, a nursery or classroom for children and students, even the main place for entertainment and (online) shopping. Europe sees this as an opportunity to join forces and, while addressing the way to overcome the COVID-19 crisis, also take advantage of the effort that has been made for years in retrofit, to rethink, redesign and modernize the building stock, adapting it to a greener environment and supporting economic recovery.
The European Commission already set in 2018 the long-term objective of being climate neutral in 2050, and last 2020 it established a medium-term objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 by 55% compared to 1990 level. To achieve this objective, buildings must make a great contribution, since they are responsible for a high percentage of these emissions, with approximately a 60% reduction; in addition to a 14% reduction in final energy consumption and 18% in energy consumption for heating and cooling. These are the premises of the Renovation Wave Strategy to improve the energy efficiency of buildings, with the aim of at least double the renovation rates over the next 10 years, thus promoting energy renovation in buildings throughout the European Union.
Furthermore, to support this, Europe is trying to ensure accessible and well-oriented financing, through initiatives within the framework of Next Generation EU the post-pandemic recovery plan, aimed at rebuilding post-COVID-19, which will also have a part for energy refurbishment in buildings.
In view of all this transformation that will take place in Europe, the European Commission has also begun to worry about aesthetics (because, as we said at the beginning, it is about transforming the old building stock, but paying attention to its historical value and as heritage). This is where the new European Bauhauswas recently born, a policy lab to work with citizens, as a participatory initiative to create resilient and inclusive cities, co-designing and co-creating a new style to provide more harmonised and sustainable future; materialising the European Green Deal and accompanying it with an aesthetic that characterises the sustainable transformation.
Is it true that these existing initiatives in the European context help and facilitate the definition of strategies for renovation of the building sector, but, if we were the politician responsible for improving the building stock in our region or municipality, where would we start?
First, it would be necessary to generate the most detailed knowledge possible of the building stock. Well, in this way, the policies on renovation and energy retrofitting in buildings will be more precise and specific to the real problems, and the solutions and financing offered adjusted to the status of the building stock in each case.
For this, we can make use of the public databases of existing buildings. At European level, the Building Stock Observatory (BSO) stands out among others, where information is collected digitally on the status of European buildings, providing a better understanding of the energy performance of buildings through reliable, consistent and comparable data. A relevant data source at European level is also TABULA/EPISCOPE, two European projects, one as the follow-up of the previous one, which provide a database of residential buildings based on defined typologies according to the size, age or other parameters, providing a set of examples for each of the countries analysed representing these building types.
Another important source of information for the characterisation of the building sector is the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) (more detailed information on this in a previous entry) of buildings, by analysing the documentation provided in the general registry of each region (autonomous community) or at national level, depending on the country. This certificate, beyond obtaining a label on the building’s energy consumption and its CO2 emissions (with letters from “A” to “F”), contains specific data on the year of construction, the construction characteristics of the building’s thermal envelope, energy systems, proposed measures to improve the energy rating, etc. So it becomes valuable information to know the status of buildings and the actions that could be carried out to improve that status, and to be able to extrapolate it to neighbourhoods, cities, regions and countries.
At CARTIF we participate in different projects aimed at improving knowledge of the building sector, and to support in decision-making that help in the definition of future renovation strategies. For example, in BuiltHub a data collection of the European building stock is carried out, as well as a roadmap is established on how to obtain reliable and useful data for the development of renovation strategies. Other projects, such as ELISE Energy Pilot, MATRYCSand BD4NRG, use the data from the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) to get a better knowledge of the status of the building stock in different regions (autonomous communities in the case of Spain), while it also participating in the development of a common certification model for Europe. Or the TEC4ENERPLAN project, where advanced techniques for multi-scale energy planning (from building to region) are developed, and support for the development of tools that serve as the basis for meeting the 2020-2050 energy efficiency goals.
Water is a source of life… and energy. In this post, we are addressing the water-energy nexus in the urban context, where both resources are essential and at the same time critical with an unexorable increase in the demand due to demographic movements and economic growth. Traditional hidrological planning policies have been based on the capacity to regulate and increase water availability. This approach has led to the gradual depletion of the resource with over-exploited aquifers, loss of quality of the water supplied, deterioration of aquatic ecosysems or the appearance of conflicts between users. In parallel, we face the effects derived from climate change, which is undoubtedly a water crisis and a threat multiplier: floods, storms and droughts are becoming more frequent and extreme, and these trends are projected to increase as the climate continues to change. Furthermore, much of the water infrastructure in the developed world is now over 50 years old and needs to be replaced, improved or repaired. Extreme temperatures and aging infrastructure will aggravate the problem of water leaks and confirm the need to control and reduce leaks in drinking water networks.
In general, all these pressures on the urban water cycle imply an increase in energy consumption and operating costs. However, to date, energy is rarely mentioned in urban water planning strategies. In this way, cities face the continuous challenge of providing urban water services without increasing the impact on the environment. This, together with the perennial debate over whether water should be a “luxury good” or a “social good accessible to all”, could place water in the focus of the biggest geopolitical conflict of the 21st century.
This current context of water scarcity and climate emergency demands solutions to increase the cities resilience. In addition, Europe aims to be the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 and municipalities will clearly play a fundamental role in this transition. The water sector can become a leader in providing the kind of green infrastructure, services and jobs needed to enable climate change mitigation and adaptation.
In CARTIF we are working on the European LIFE NEXUS project that proposes a paradigm shift by considering the urban water cycle as a source of renewable energy. Throughout the cycle there are locations with excess energy where it is necessary to adapt the flow or pressure to the supply conditions. Within the framework of the project, we are analyzing the potential of mini-hydropower systems to recover the unexploited energy at these sites where energy is being dissipated.
Our project addresses two complementary objectives. On the one hand, we have carried out the first European inventory of the mini-hydropower potential in European cities, which is already available through the project website and currently houses data from 101 locations. On the other hand, we seek to identify what type of technology is ideal for urban sites where the electricity generation capacity is usually less than 100 kW. Among the different systems available, the Pump as Turbine (PaT) technology has been selected and the novel integration of a PaT with a battery storage is being carried out to optimize the energy generation and use. The new prototype will be fully operational by the end of 2021 at the Drinking Water Treatment Plant (DWTP) of León in Spain. One of the objectives of the project will be to validate this innovative technology, obtain information on its real performance and analyze its viability. Specificallly, it is expected to have a generation of 252 MWh per year of renewable electricity and a 100% in GHG emisisons from th DWTP, which means avoiding the emission of 163 tons of CO2 equiv per year.
In this way, life nexus does its particular bit in the clean energy transition. Learn more about the project on its website, latest news, ad if you have data on potential locations o r existing facilities, do not hesitate a become a Follower of the project*.
*We encourage you to participate, since the most promising Folloers will receive in a later phase of the project a personalized report with the feasabilityof the technology.
In recent years, it has been heard more and more frequently talking about such an abstract concept as mathematical models in an abstract appearance. With the COVID-19 epidemic, news bulletins were filled with news with “predictions” about what could happen in the future and the impact of different confinement measures. This global emergency situation, and the lack of experience with something completely new, turned the problem into something too vast not to use any tool that would help us evaluate what were the best alternatives to manage the pandemic, and this is where the models play a fundamental role.
First, it is necessary to emphasize that the models are not a “divinatory science”, but are only a representation of reality. In fact, in our heads daily we build mental models and future scenarios to make decisions, that is, based on our past experience we anticipate and evaluate the consequences in the future of different alternatives, and based on this, we make choices about for example, what type of shoes wearing in a wedding, or how we organize the week. But when the system becomes too complex (many interconnected variables), we are left with only three options:
1) Go crazy trying to mentally analyse something immeasurable.
2) Take risks without thinking about future consequences.
3) Call on the help provided by formal models or tools when making decisions.
Of course, we are not going to build a model to decide what kind of clothes to take on a trip, but in the case of analysis of important decisions, such us certain policies and strategies that require large investments, or whose consequences are relevant for society, it is seems the most appropriate option.
In emergency situations, and with high uncertainty, as occurred during the pandemic, the models and planning tools built from them serve as a guide. No matter how much uncertainty the future inevitable implies, it is better to make “guided” decisions under the light of a headlamp than totally dark. According to George E.P. Box, “in essence, all the models are incorrect, the practical question is whether they are useful to us.”
Another undoubtedly emergency situation, although apparently more distant, is climate change. Due to the increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since the Industrial Revolution, the balance on the planet has been altered. CO2 is the gas that is currently contributing the most to this warming, basically because it is the gas that we have emitted the most in recent years. This gas, along with methane (CH4 ) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are called “long-lived” GHGs, because they persist in the atmosphere for decades and even centuries. Due to this, in climate policies it is essential to consider the dynamics of the climate system in which the effects are long-term, and in addition it is necessary to consider the inercia, that is to say, if in this year 2021, we cut all GHG emissions, the temperature would continue increasing. Therefore, the moment in which the policies are applied and implemented is also key.
Due to this, the use of dynamic models is essential for the design of climate policies, that is, models in which the variable “time” is the fundamental piece and, precisely, the objective is to be able to determine how certain variables of interest are going to evolve over time building scenarios (or different “possible” futures).
Likewise, due to the characteristics of the problem, the evaluation of climate policies is not only carried out in the short-medium term, but also needs to be done in the long term. For example, the European Union´ s climate neutrality target is set at 2050: almost 30 years from now!
Considering this global challenge, it is necessary to define planning instruments to give an “international and coordinated response”. Specifically, the European Union demands that each member state prepare the NECP (National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan) in which each country indicates its own decarbonization objectives as well as the measures to achieve them, including energy transition policies, together with an ante evaluation of these policies, precisely using this type of models and future projections.
Thus, the models are key support tools to help the politician or the person responsible of designing policies or strategies based on the information they offer. We know that perfection in real life (in real systems) does not exist, but we can make better decisions by evaluating which alternatives are better, or if they are simply feasible before implementing them. It would make no sense in a political plan to define objectives and measures by throwing numbers into the air. How much confidence would these long-term political promises give? What feeling would it produce in the population? Not just anger, but something worse: mistrust, leading to hopelessness and inaction. Therefore, planning tools have to: help understand the problem and raise awareness, and secondly, analyse and compare solutions, including their effectiveness, thus motivating the acceptance of said solutions as well as their future implementation.
But climate change is not the only problem in our society. Recently an investigation by the journal Science was released in the news, in which it warned about the threat of biodiversity due to the future massive deployment and without management of renewable energies in the territory. Therefore, planning instruments must go further and help us answer “somewhat” more complex questions: how to carry out the energy transition in an orderly and socially fair way? How to plan the territory to deal with climate change, favouring local development, and at the same time respecting biodiversity? In this regard, it is key in the design of climate and energy policies to also consider the different sustainable development objectives (social, economic, environmental,etc.) and therefore to use models that allow holistic analyses considering all the other aspects, such as through the so-called Integrated Assessments Models.
CARTIF participates in the development of this type of support tools for decision-making in matters of climate change in projects such as CCliMAP and LOCOMOTION. In the first case, modelling GHG emissions derived from territorial planning instruments at the municipal level. In the second project, through the development of IAMs (Integrated Assessment Models) in system dynamics, allowing the analysis and design of energy transition and sustainability policies even at the global level.
In companies it is essential to design and evaluate strategies before making decisions in order to use resources effectively. Our planet is the home we share, which provides us with the resources we need. What can interest us more than defining a good strategy to maintain the balance of our planet? It is clear that if it is necessary to radically change our roadmap, it is better that we know “how” as soon as possible.
