CESBA-MED Co-creation Workshop - Urban Sustainability Indicators

A CESBA-MED Co-creation Workshop has been held at ESADE Creapolis in Sant Cugat del Valles.

Experts groups on different topics brainstormed implementation and up scaling strategies for the CESBA-MED tool‚ which allows assessing and benchmarking sustainability indicators for neighbourhoods.

Torsten Masseck participated on behalf of UPC in the experts group on Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) together with experts from many other institutions, research entities and private consultancies.

The complexity of urban sustainability required instruments for planning new developments properly and assessing existing neighbourhoods for tracking improvement processes. CESBA-TOOL is a new instrument for public administration as well as private urban planning practices, which contributes to progress in this field. Educational activities on the tool will start soon.

https://cesba-med.interreg-med.eu

UPSCALING WORKSHOP AT THE POTSDAM INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE IMPACT RESEARCH

The SLA project representatives from Switzerland, Germany, Finland and Spain met with project managers of similar German initiatives at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) for exchanging experience, discussing the Upscaling challenge of each project and looking for opportunities for further collaborations.

Beside SLA, two other projects have been presented: the UPSCALE project from Tübingen and the Klima Neutral Berlin initiative run by PIK. https://klimaneutral.berlin

The meeting place has been spectacular cupola of one of the former astronomic observatories of PIK from the end of the 19^th century. https://www.pik-potsdam.de

2ND INTERNATIONAL WORKING PHASE MEETING OF THE IEA EBC ANNEX 74 “COMPETITION & LIVING LAB PLATFORM”

The 2^nd international Working Phase Meeting and a first Annex 74 workshop was held from 16^th to 17^th of November at the Solar Decathlon Middle East Competition in Dubai.

Annex 74 (http://annex74.iea-ebc.org) aims to set up an authorized international platform for the evolution and linking of existing competitions and living labs as well as discussing new concepts. The concepts may encompass the building as well as the district level including sustainable mobility. The main target group are participants from the field of the academic education of architects and engineers, linked to the building industry.

The workshop on “Simulation & Monitoring” has been held for the SDEME teams on November 16^th strengthening their knowledge on these topics and has been received very positive by the team members.

During the Working Phase Meeting, the progress of the Annex 74 work has been discussed; the current state of the Knowledge Platform (https://building-competition.org/) has been presented, the integration of Living Labs in the platform have been debated and future activities have been defined.

An important point has been the discussion about helping to encourage the generation of educational materials within future Solar Decathlon Competitions or post-competition Living Lab activities.

Educational Videos are a powerful tool, as many prototypes might not be in a perfect shape of operation after the competition. They might consist in general "Making of…" videos, guided visit videos about specific technical solutions and concepts e.g. BIPV, energy storage, HVAC, Lighting, Water cycle, Bioclimatic strategies, or post-competition videos, done when prototypes are on their final destination (e.g. a university campus), stating the operation and performance under real conditions of use and over a longer period. Living Lab LOW3 has gained important experience in this field through its associated MOOC course (http://livinglab-low3.blogspot.com/2018/03/mooc-low3-zero-living-officially-started.html)

The next Annex 74 meetings 2019 will take place in Ghent (BE) and Szentendre (HU) during the 2019 SDE Competition (http://sde2019.hu/index_en.html). Dubai will host another SDME in 2020 and will announce the call for teams soon. The results of the SDME 2018 competition can be found here: https://sdme-contest.com/

SLA ROADMAPPING WORKSHOP SANT CUGAT DEL VALLÈS

The SLA Roadmapping Workshop with the first 7 pilot families has taken place at the ETSAV School of Architecture (UPC) at Sant Cugat del Vallès.

In a first step the results of the Quick Footprint Questionnaire, which allowed to analise the current material and carbon footprint of our families, have been presented, with detailed information about their impact inf the fields of housing, mobility, food, consumption and leisure activites.

It showed that footprints where quite diverse, from arround 3.8t up to over 18 tonnes of CO2 per person. A more detailed look at the results showed that mainly long distance travelling has been the cause for individual elevated footprints, and interesting discussions arose regarding the impact of mobility and posible future changes in order to mitigate these impacts.

As second step a range of over 70 "actions for footprint reduction" have been presented to the families, with detailed information about the individual contribution of each action to a lower carbon footprint. One day of working at home instead of traveling 20 km to the office by private car would allow for savings of arround 120kg CO2 a year. Changing to a 100% renewable electricity supplier might have an impact of arround 900kg CO2 per year, depending of the current supplier and its energy mix, as well as the individual consumption pattern.

With this detailed information about specific options, families designed a set of actions which would bring them to a "3 tonnes CO2 per person lifestyle", considered an important milestone for 2030 in order to limit global warming to 1.5ºC in 2100, and before aiming for a "1 ton CO2 per person lifestyle" in 2050.

After this exercise, families entered into the third part of the workshop: locating their individually selected options on a timeline to 2030 in order to define which action might be implementated in which moment. Through this las step, families achieved creating their personal and specific roadmap towards a more sustainable lifestyle, which is now ready to be implemented!

Based on this first experiences in all 7 partner countries, the SLA project aims to develop in the upcoming 2 years an online platform which will allow the personal calculation, roadmapping and tracking of the CO2 and material footprints of private households through digital tools.

During the next 2 month our pilot families will start implementing their roadmaps, we will support them together with local stakeholders like the municipality of Sant Cugat, and we will gather further knowledge how to foster the process and improve the success of the Sustainable Lifestyle Accelerator methodology.