Cost-effective, sustainable multi-functional and/or prefabricated holistic renovation packages, integrating RES and including re-used and recycled materials (Built4People)

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Increased scale and productivity in the renovation process: demonstrated and quantified decrease of on-site construction / renovation work time (at least 30% and towards 50%).
• Benchmarked and quantified improvement of insulation and air-tightness compared to standard renovation solutions.
• Demonstrated improvement of indoor environment and user comfort and satisfaction, as well as accessibility, increasing attractiveness of renovation for buildings owners and users.
• Improved affordability of sustainable renovation and RES systems in buildings, in particular for households experiencing energy poverty issues.
• Demonstrated reduction of embodied energy and CO₂ of renovation, and emission of air pollutants over the life cycle.
• Increased deployment of built-in renewable energy generation solutions for on-site multi-purpose (heating, cooling, electricity) renewable energy generation.
• Increased share of reused and /or recycled and/or biosourced construction materials / products used in building renovation to contribute to circular economy.
• Faster uptake of EU-wide standards or certification of reused and / or recycled construction materials / products.

Proposals are expected to deliver large-scale, real life demonstration of promising technology innovations already demonstrated at lab level. Proposals should cover all of the following:

• Develop renovation solutions for a range of needs (from renovations limited in scope to deep renovations) applying predominantly re-used and / or recycled and/or biosourced construction materials / products in a cradle-to-cradle approach, allowing for installation without significantly modifying the structure of the building (or without overloading existing structures) and demonstrating a high replication and industrial potential.
• Develop multi-functional (passive & active) and scalable renovation solutions to improve energy performance of buildings, applicable to different building types based on prefabricated components and integrated RES systems.
• Develop building envelope solutions with integral means for combined active/passive management of energy transfer, i.e., integrating RES for active heat and sound insulation and direct on-site renewable electricity generation.
• Seek to support the integration of local sources of reused components and secondary raw materials in the renovation packages relying, where relevant, on urban mining.
• Develop novel testing methodologies oriented towards assessing the long-term performance of the elements. This should include the estimation of durability and service life.
• Model and test in actual scale the materials and components selected.
• Benchmark energy and environmental performance (applying the appropriate Level(s) indicators), monitoring (at least one year) at real scale of the new solutions, also demonstrating compliance with project and regulatory requirements, and demonstrating cost-effectiveness of the renovation solutions over the lifetime.
• Assess the risks related to major disruptive events (such as flooding, heat waves, and/or other climate-driven events and/or earthquakes) that apply to the geographical zones targeted and, where relevant, include an analysis of resilience of the renovated building / infrastructure against those major disruptive events.
• Demonstrate, based on clear and thorough documentation of relevant activities, that the proposed solutions lead to reduced maintenance costs, lead to an improvement of indoor environment and user comfort and satisfaction, as well as accessibility, can be used in a wide range of environmental conditions, favour sustainable use of resources, respect sustainability life cycle principles, including end-of-life analysis involving the reuse of new and replaced elements at the end of service life.
• Consider renovation packages also integrating renewable energy sources for buildings with respect of the aesthetic, the historical value and/or the local architectural identity.
• Lead at least 3 large-scale demonstration of the solutions in diverse geographical areas, with various local environmental, social, and economic conditions, addressing both residential and non-residential buildings.
• Where relevant, contribute to standardisation (e.g. recycled concrete CEN standard) and certification activities (e.g. guides for non-standard hybrid component assessment).

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘People-centric, Sustainable Built Environment’ (Built4People).

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 7 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

Co-programmed European Partnerships