A new effort not to leave idle prior results obtained in EU projects

In recent years, many international research or cooperation projects have been conducted to optimize the eco-sustainability of public buildings by improving energy performance without making significant structural changes. IT and financial tools, guidelines and action strategies had been developed which, however, once the projects were completed, risked being left unused.

The two-year Interreg-CE TARGET-CE project, started in April 2020, accepted the challenge of the Interreg-CE call entitled “Capitalization through coordination” and therefore set itself the goal of recovering, improving, integrating and enhancing the results of eight projects carried out in various European funding programs: BOOSTEE-CE, ENERGY @ SCHOOL, FEEDSCHOOLS, eCENTRAL, CitiEnGov (Interreg-CE), EMPOWER (Interreg-EU), GreenSoul and PANEL2050 (H2020).

The consortium is led by Fondazione Bruno Kessler, in particular by Fabio Remondino’s 3DOM unit, which had previously coordinated the BOOSTEE-CE project, promoting the use of 3D geospatial data, intelligent energy management tools, energy audits and strategies financing solutions to facilitate the energy efficiency of public buildings.

FBK-3DOM will now coordinate the eight international partners of TARGET-CE with the aim to:

– group, change and implement IT tools, financial models, implementation strategies and courses for local and regional administrations developed in past projects;

– integrate these solutions into dedicated local action plans to improve energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy in public buildings;

– apply and test the capitalized solutions in new pilot areas (including 1 transnational) based in Italy (Ferrara and Union of Municipalities of Lower Romagna), Poland (Milanówek and Podgórzyn), Slovenia (Nazarje), Croatia (Split), Austria (Weiz) and the Czech Republic (Chrastava).

The results achieved by TARGET will be made available on the platform created by the BOOSTEE-CE project called OnePlace, which will become the hub for results and solutions in building energy efficiency.

What are the biggest challenges of the project? First, to recover the IT solutions developed in other projects (smartphone app, web-app, etc.) and make them accessible and usable in other geographical contexts. Also, the updating of financial instruments and action strategies will require a great deal of support from industry experts.

The impact that the COVID-19 pandemic is having and will have in the next few months also on research should not be underestimated, for example in terms of restrictions on travel, events and physical meetings. The partners will therefore use different communication solutions and will organize virtual gatherings, after the few physical meetings with stakeholders that vould be held up to this point. Collaborations and access to schools are also on stand-by at this time, therefore it will be necessary to use digital interaction methods also with students, citizens, administrators and energy experts.