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Positive Energy Buildings (PEBs) represent a step forward from Net Zero Energy Buildings. In particular, theyshall contributeby decarbonizing the built environment, including surrounding buildings, exchanging energy among them or with the grid. Thus, they can reduce the energy grid congestion and provide a flexible energy asset thatallowsbuildings and energy communitiestoactasan integrated part of the energy system, while ensuring healthy and comfortable indoor environment, embracing occupants’ diversities and needs, supporting users’ energy-related practices and their flexibility and minimizing their own carbon footprint. In this direction, a consolidated definition is needed in order to enable the design, assessment, and documentation of PEBs in different contexts, climates, cultures, and markets. This paper aims to present a joint understanding of the essence and benefits of Positive Energy Buildings applied to the residential sector, as discussed within the three sister projects Cultural-E (https://www.cultural-e.eu/ led by Eurac Research), EXCESS (https://positive-energy-buildings.eu/ led by Joanneum Research), and syn.ikia (https://www.synikia.eu/ led by NTNU), which were funded under the Programme H2020-EU.2.1.5.2/Call topic2. The joint work also led to the identification of barriers and drivers for an increased acceptance and adoption of PEBs and to the definition of a list of recommendations for policy makers.

Currently, no common definition of PEBs exists, which complicates technical solutions’ and business models' development across different climatic zones. This chapter defines a PEB based on thorough research conducted in the EU-funded EXCESS project. The chapter begins with a discussion on PEB backgrounds, such as PEB concepts' origin and comparison of concepts similar to PEB. After that a technical framework is introduced by presenting different technical criteria that need to be considered. Based on the EXCESS project's research, a positive energy building (PEB) is defined as ‘an energy-efficient building that produces more energy than it uses via renewable sources, with high self-consumption rate and high energy flexibility, over a time span of one year’. After the technical framework introduction, a social framework of PEBs is discussed. Finally, a technically and socially feasible PEB definition is provided. This discussion includes PEB as part of an energy community and PEBs in relation to smart readiness indicator.

This chapter begins with presenting regulatory, social, financial and technology-related aspects affecting the wide roll-out of PEBs, discussing both the preventing and promoting factors. Recommendations are also given on how to overcome the barriers and take advantage of the opportunities. After this, the possible renewable energy sources and energy storage technologies are discussed. The opportunities, climatic and other challenges, and cost analysis are presented for the renewable energy sources and energy storage. Moreover, PEBs as a part of the local energy infrastructure are presented. Finally, key learnings are provided for the main actors.

The building sector plays an important role in the transition to a climate-neutral society. The international interest in low, zero energy, or zero-emission buildings has grown as a potential means for this transition. A more ambitious step from zero energy buildings is the concept of Positive Energy Buildings (PEB), which are also contributing to the decarbonization of the surrounding built environment, not just minimizing their own carbon footprint. A shared PEB definition is needed in order to enable the design, assessment, and documentation of positive energy buildings. This article describes the ongoing discussions, concentrating on the most essential points.

Positive energy buildings (PEBs) can contribute to mitigating climate change. This introductory chapter provides a broader context for PEBs and information on current PEBs in Europe. First, the chapter presents the important role of the building sector in climate change mitigation on the global and EU level, and PEBs as enablers for a consumer-centred clean energy transition and contributor to climate neutrality. The chapter then touches upon the current European climate and energy policy framework for 2030 and the European Green Deal with its goal for Europe’s economy and society to become climate-neutral by 2050 and reflects the role of PEBs in these. The chapter ends by introducing examples of existing PEBs all around Europe.

This chapter discusses mainly the technical implementation of PEBs. First, the chapter presents how the EXCESS project parties are planning to implement the PEB concept in four different geographical areas in Europe, as cooling and heating demands vary between regions. The demo locations are Helsinki in Finland, Granada in Spain, Hasselt in Belgium and Graz in Austria. After demo case presentations, the roles of digitalisation in PEBs and business models for energy transformation are addressed. Finally, lessons learned from implementing demo cases are discussed.

Existing building stock is responsible for a significant share of energy consumption in cities, consequent emissions, and effects on climate change. Energy refurbishment of buildings can have an essential contribution to sustainable strategies of cities in Europe. District-Scale Refurbishment (D-SR) has many benefits compared to single building refurbishment, but some barriers have delayed the realisation of district-scale projects. This article aims to explain the importance of district-scale approaches for energy-efficient refurbishment and presents the findings related to the need for a new-type of role needed to accelerate district-level energy-efficient refurbishment projects, defined as an “activator”. Threefold methodology was applied to conduct this study including (1) a literature review to analyse issues that enable or hinder district-scale energy refurbishment of existing buildings, (2) twenty-five semi-structured interviews were carried out of pioneering representatives of architectural engineering and construction (AEC) in Finland and the questionnaire was designed to encompass Osterwalder's business canvas approach. Thematic findings were identified based on the qualitative results of the interviews. The results of this study demonstrate that while district-scale refurbishment is seen beneficial in many aspects, it requires new roles, and an activator is needed to initiate and possibly lead the process. At the same time, the role of the municipality emerged as extremely important as an enabler by supporting flexible town-planning, open information, strong support for citizens' participation processes and by providing incentives for starting the process. The optimum profile of an activator is very demanding, requiring skills in process understanding, networking, and collaboration, in addition to expertise in energy solutions and technologies. This role could be taken by, e.g. contractors, project managers or engineering companies. The major challenge remains concerning who would pay for the role of an ‘activator’ during the initial stages of D-SR. This could be solved e.g. through a national incentive or the activator could be hired by the municipality. The value proposition should be for the end-users and could be based on (a) saving or increasing the value of a residential flat, (b) improving the living environment and increasing the attractiveness of the district, (c) improving well-being, or (d) easiness of refurbishment process.

Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) can provide services to the final customer using electricity, to a microgrid, and/or to external actors such as the Distribution System Operator (DSO) and Transmission System Operator (TSO). In this paper, BESS as a service business model archetypes are drawn from case studies of 10 BESS as a service projects in Finland. It is found that, in addition to the service being provided by the BESS, the ownership of the system can vary: it can either be owned by the final consumer of electricity or by a third party who will provide the BESS as a service. The findings of the interviews are placed within the Finnish regulatory framework for storage and demand response services. It is concluded that the key enablers for the BESS as a service business model are a regulatory framework that allows stacked revenues and technological interoperability across a multi-customer business model.

The increase in distributed renewable energy supply offers new opportunities to improve the performance of local energy systems. In line with this, research and development has begun to broaden its scope from the building scale towards the neighbourhood and district scales. The formulation and comparison of potential energy solutions in different contexts at different scales of analysis demands well-defined concepts and robust decision support tools. This paper studies the concept of energy positive neighbourhoods, which it defines as areas “in which the annual energy demand is lower than annual energy supply from local renewable energy sources. … The aim is to support the integration of distributed renewable energy generation into wider energy networks and provide a functional, healthy, user friendly environment with as low energy demand and little environmental impact as possible.” Key performance indicators for energy positive neighbourhoods are proposed along with an ‘energy positivity label’. A decision support tool, called AtLas, designed to inform the long term planning of neighbourhood energy solutions is described and used to evaluate the energy positivity level of a Finnish residential neighbourhood and part of a French university campus.

Finding the way to predict optimal thermal conditions for an office worker would contribute to sustainable building design: the environmental effects would be reduced, the economics of the organization and whole society would improve and there would be indisputable social benefits for the individual and the global community. These benefits stem from the improved productivity of the office worker in most favorable thermal environment and the possibilities to achieve this with lower energy demand. This study uses a new approach, exergy analysis, to recognise the optimal conditions by looking for the combination of mean radiant temperature and room air temperature giving the lowest human body exergy consumption rate. All of the commonly used thermal comfort prediction methods use energy analysis, and it seems that exergy analysis could give more accurate prediction of the conditions giving optimal thermal comfort. The new method is applied to the case of office worker in typical and extreme weather conditions in Finland. The results agree well with the previous analyses, and moreover, the points giving minimum human body exergy consumption rate coincide with the points usually regarded as most comfortable in summer conditions. According to recent studies, people are also most productive at these conditions.

Many energy performance assessment methods are available. There are both dynamic and steady state methods, of which initial data may be based on statistics or physical models. However, many of the tools are not suitable in refurbishment projects because of the difficulties in defining the input values for the building and user behaviour. The objective of the study was to review the existing energy performance assessment tools and make conclusions for the new type of tools needed especially by small companies in refurbishment projects. The study concluded that the right combination of ease-of-use and accuracy is important. This can be achieved with the help of dynamic calculation engine, carefully defined local data and well-selected default values and − on the other hand − with the help of openness which enables the users to access the default values and give detailed true data when that is available. This combination enables both rough estimations in early phases and more accurate assessment when better information is available. The research developed a new tool based on these principles and carried out a wide survey among potential users. The survey supported the preliminary understanding and highlighted further needs of SMEs in refurbishment projects.

Energy Positive Neighbourhoods (EPNs) are those in which the annual energy demand is lower than the energy supply from local renewable energy sources [1]. The IDEAS project strives to demonstrate how EPNs can be cost-effectively and incrementally implemented by designing, testing and validating energy management and urban planning tools and related user interfaces and business models in a residential neighbourhood in Porvoo Finland and a university campus in Bordeaux, France. This paper presents preliminary results on ICT-supported business in EPNs that will be validated through real case demonstrations [2].

This paper studies current public building and refurbishment processes from the point of view of a municipal client and formulates recommendations for the management of sustainable building in public building projects.The paper describes a case study of procurement of design in the city of Vantaa (the third largest city in Finland). The aim of Vantaa was to develop their procurement practices inside the frame set by the directive of public procurement. The study was performed with help of a literature survey, interviews and workshops. Based on the study, the following recommendations can be given to change or develop the practices of public building owners to achieve sustainable building:- The creation of an action plan for sustainable building to manifest the decision of sustainable building in the organisation and to guide the programming and target setting of all projects. - Selecting suitable delivery model for the project is essential and a task that needs more emphasis and competence. Different models suit different types of projects. From the multidisciplinary collaboration point of view the models that enable all relevant actors to participate in decision making early enough should be preferred. - Attaining better understanding of the use of quality based criteria in tendering processes according to the principles of public procurement. - The reinforcement of the project preparation stage. Renewal of process phases and tasks, and roles of different actors will be needed. - Adopting performance based target setting and formulation of a framework for continuous improvement of performance levels targeted. - Better utilization of building information models. BIM offer a technology for communication and interaction of project stakeholders, and for the management of sustainable building information through the life cycle of buildings. - Reinforcement of collaborative processes and owner's guidance in design.

In Nordic countries significant primary energy saving potential exists in houses built before 1980. These old houses need to be renovated, which provides an opportunity for implementation of energy efficiency measures. However, there are several economic and market hindrances and the renovation markets are dominated by handicraft-based individual solutions. In this paper we have analyzed the opportunities for implementation of one-stop-shop business models where an overall contractor offers full-service renovation packages including consulting, independent energy audit, renovation work, follow-up (independent quality control and commissioning) and financing. A comparative assessment of emerging business models in the Nordic countries shows that different types of actors can provide such a service. Financing is included in some models. There are differences in how customers are contacted, while the similarities are on how the service is provided. Even though there is strong business potential for one-stop-shop energy renovation concept, still it has been somewhat difficult to start or run such a business. Various options to overcome the hindrances to promote energy efficient renovation of detached houses are discussed.

The Nordic SuccessFamilies project, with participants from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, dealt with development of business models for full-service energy-efficient renovation of detached houses in the Nordic countries (see Figure 1). The background to this project is that most of these houses are more than 30 years old and have a need to be renovated, which provides opportunities for implementation of energy-efficiency measures. Energy-related renovation of existing buildings has huge potential for cost-effective energy savings. Residential buildings are responsible for 70% of the energy use of buildings in the Nordic countries. Single-family houses are responsible for more than 50% of this. There is a substantial shortage of business concepts for renovation services for single-family houses. The solution to the lack of business concepts for renovation services for single-family houses is that, first of all, renovation service packages should be developed to include standard technical solutions for energy-efficiency improvements applicable for different building systems and ages of building. Secondly, all other necessary services should be included, providing overall renovation solutions for those people living in single-family houses. The new services must be supported with new features, such as better visualisation, guaranteed prices, and funding services. To create such new services, Nordic co-operation was initiated in 2009. The main objective of the SuccessFamilies project was to change the business environment in order to speed up the implementation of sustainable renovation of single-family houses. The resulting new service concepts combine technical solutions; financing services; and other means of overcoming the behavioural, organisational, legal, and social barriers to sustainable renovation.

existing single-family houses in the Nordic countries are to have competitive power compared to new buildings on the future housing market. Good technical solutions exist but need to be combined based on the full range of (standard) solutions in order to reach the low primary energy level of new houses. A one-stop-shop in the form of a full-service concept could be seen as a possibility to make it easy for the homeowner to comply with possible future requirements to realize far-reaching energy savings in connection with extensive renovations, provided that the building sector offers the solutions. Such one-stop-shops in the form of full-service providers of energy efficient renovation of single-family house are missing in the Nordic countries, although this service is vital to open up the market. As part of the Nordic research project `SuccesFamilies´ with the purpose to change the business environment in order to speed up the implementation of sustainable renovation of single-family houses –a sustainable renovation concept suitable for different categories of single-family houses with regard to type and age has been proposed in this article. The sustainable renovation concept includes an ideal full-service concept and technical renovation solutions targeted to different types of single-family houses.

ICT will have an increasing role in energy and indoor ambient monitoring, which will enable novel services to building occupants and operators. In the IntUBE -project an end-user interface is demonstrated, where both occupants' sensation of thermal comfort and building's energy efficiency information are displayed. Data for the end-user interface is provided by a continuous commissioning and monitoring service for buildings' technical systems and indoor air. The service is mainly based on the RAUinfo application in cooperation with the Human Thermal Model. The RAUinfo application is further developed in the IntUBE project, whereby a new wireless ambient monitoring tool has been included in the application. By utilising wireless sensors in the ambient monitoring tool the following benefits can be achieved: monitoring devices can be easily transferred from one monitored location to another, the monitoring system can be extended with additional sensors afterwards, if needed. Additionally, with wireless sensors the existing building automation system's monitoring can be supplemented, and monitoring tool can be utilised also in one-time energy or indoor air quality studies, not only for continuous monitoring purposes. Furthermore, the wireless and portable monitoring devices have better cost effectiveness than stationary monitoring system.

The Nordic research project “Success Families”, is a joint project between VTT in Finland, Danish Technical University, Mid Sweden University and Segel AS in Norway. The aim of the project is to find out how to bridge missing link between the homeowner and the variety of suppliers of relevant products and services. The project started in May 2009 and will conclude in first quarter 2012. This paper presents preliminary conclusions related to stakeholders’ interests and what barriers and opportunities are identified so far in the market place for energy efficient renovation of detached houses. As the work in this project is in progress, the presentation at the conference will include new findings identified after the deadline of this paper.

The objective of the research was to assess the roles of municipal building authorities and their potential to act when a rapid change is needed towards energy-efficient and sustainable building and refurbishment. Our premise was that local authorities will have an essential role in improving the awareness and commitment of stakeholders and in supporting them to understand potentials of sustainable building. However, this may require the development of current roles. According to the results, consultation and negotiating steering is useful and needed especially towards non-professional builders. Change to consulting steering requires changes in building control processes. The strengths of guidance by building control authorities would be neutrality, good coverage (all builders must anyway be involved with building control), personal contacts, and responding to acute need of the client. To increase the consulting role of the building control authorities, more resources are needed. Establishment of electronic services in building control is believed to be a means to release resources from routine work for guidance.Municipal actors are also showing increasing interest in preparing city-level sustainability strategies. The municipal strategies should be closely linked to the local administration to ensure the realization of the strategy and also the allocation of adequate resources.

This chapter studies how local and regional planning instruments can promote positive energy buildings (PEBs). Local and regional authorities were interviewed across Europe regarding practical level approaches to governing and planning the development of Nearly and Net Zero Energy Buildings as well as PEBs. The interview analysis provides insights into local and regional authorities’ present strategies and planning approaches to developing PEBs. It identifies needs for—and barriers to—upscaling and explores local and regional ambitions to adapt planning systems accordingly. Learnings collected from cities’ and regions’ practitioners, urban planners, district developers, and experts are collected into a guidebook that aims to empower subnational governments to promote PEBs by integrating policies and measures in urban planning frameworks at the city and regional level.

In the Nordic Innovation Centre Project, SuccessFamilies, the main objective is to change the business environment in order to speed up the implementation of sustainable renovation of single-family houses – proposing new service concepts that will combine both the technical solutions, financing services as well as other promoting issues to overcome the behavioural, organizational, legal and social barriers that exist in sustainable renovation. A starting point for such a change has been to get an overview of the existing sustainable renovation concepts, i.e. full-service concepts and technical concepts. The paper describes a few Nordic examples of full-service models for renovation of single-family houses which entered the market recently and the provisional success of these concepts. The existing Nordic single-family house renovation market is dominated by a craftsman based approach with individual solutions, traditional warehouses ”do-it-yourself-shops” and some actors marketing single products. To speed up the implementation of sustainable renovation of single-family houses there is a great need for full-service packages. Existing technical renovation concepts, typically focusing on application of only a few of the available technical solutions, have not been successful in realizing large scale energy efficiency gains.

The aim of this study was to identify the main market barriers which prevent energy efficiency improvements in cities and communities. The results reveal that despite the differences of the economic, cultural, social and political environments of the studied countries, some main market barriers seem to exist in all countries. The most significant identified barriers were educational/information-related barriers, cost-oriented thinking and bureaucratic/ regulatory barriers. The findings of this study suggest that some strategies could be implemented in all the studied countries: the government bodies should provide incentives for energy efficient refurbishment in forms of financial instruments, policies and subsidies; more supportive regulations and legal framework are needed, and social awareness could be raised by introducing educational programmes at different levels encompassing all stakeholders.

A set of new key performance indicators (KPIs) is proposed for evaluating the energy positivity level of neighbourhoods. These KPIs include yearly on-site energy ratio (OER) and energy mismatch indicators for each energy type (heating, cooling and electricity). The mismatch indicators include annual mismatch ratio (AMR), maximum hourly surplus (MHS), maximum hourly deficit (MHD) and monthly ratio of peak hourly demand to lowest hourly demand (RPL). This is followed by presenting the results from a number of energy simulations where the indicators are calculated. It can be observed that the threshold or target values for the indicators might be different for different countries/climates. The indicators presented here proved useful in considering the probable configurations for the near future aiming at nearly zero-energy neighbourhoods.