As European buildings are responsible for 36% of CO2 emissions, the subject of deep renovation of buildings has become central in its role for making Europe climate neutral by 2050. Henceforth, there is a compelling need for a new set of skills to deep renovation projects. 4RinEU MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) offers to new professionals in the construction sector a comprehensive set of lessons and training materials to develop such skills.

The course introduces the basics of deep renovation in residential buildings, though some modules are applicable to any kind of building. The student will be able to get a grasp of energy efficiency in buildings, and how to achieve a deep renovation project based on passive and active technologies.

4RinEU course is intended to teach and form a new generation of skilled practitioners of the deep area of sustainable built environment. It welcomes students of any built environment discipline and overall, any professionals in the built environment (designers, engineers, architects, researchers, developers, contractors, facility managers).

The effort also included the framing within the European multilingual classification of Skills, Competences and Occupations (ESCO) as well as Universal Design for Learning principles.

The course is structured in 6 weeks:

• Week 1 – Towards 2050 Carbon Neutrality: the role of energy efficiency in buildings
• Week 2 – Building envelope: prefabricated multifunctional façade
• Week 3 – Building performance calculation and data analysis: definition, procedure, data flow and results representation and analysis
• Week 4 – Deep renovation process: supporting decision
• Week 5 – Integration of renewables: early design methodology for renewables
• Week 6 – Lessons learnt from case studies

Go to 4RinEU Massive Open Online Course

The 4ERinEU project is developing technological products, software tools, and methodologies, which offer innovative advantages and solutions to needs in the framework of building renovations and energy retrofits.

10 main exploitable results were identified, on which partner R2M-Solution, together with EURAC and all the consortium partners, is developing strategies to best exploit them on the market. In this field, the performed analysis aims to manage the steps between research and development phase toward the market and commercialization activities, for those results which are more advanced in the development, while in general to ensure a better connection between R&D and market for all the project results.

The project partners are developing technological products (like the multifunctional prefabricated façade system, or the algorithms for smart operation of ceiling fans, or the Plug & Play Energy Hub), software tools offering solutions for simulation of RES systems and passive techniques, analysis and visualization of monitored data before and after the renovation interventions, and a deep renovation BIM-based collaborative design platform. In the project also comprehensive methodologies and calculation tools are under completion like the cost-optimal energy audit, the early design rating tool, a comprehensive strategy towards deep renovation, and the guidelines and technology concepts for managing building components end of life.

This represents a comprehensive set of integrated solutions for building refurbishments, particularly in the field of deep renovation, ranging from technological products to software, based on a complete set of methodologies.

In the exploitation activities for each product and the result of the project, a value proposition was developed, to analyse the peculiarities of each of them, their strengths and the specific benefits they can offer to the various customer segments.

A market watching activity is under completion, intending to analyse trends and features of the market segments related to the 4RinEU solutions. Peculiarities of market competitors and their products are also being analysed, to investigate similar solutions and services already available on the market, and corresponding strengths and weaknesses of the solutions developed in 4RinEU.

On this basis, proposals for real plans for exploitation path to the market have been proposed and they will be completed during the next months.

Between the suitable market segments, we are focusing on the field of deep renovation of social housing buildings and residential buildings stocks owned by housing companies (public or private) or by real estate actors.

This is an interesting area since it has great needs for maintenance and renovation, with high potential for energy savings and improvement of comfort conditions in homes.

Furthermore, this field presents large buildings assets that include great numbers of buildings. Often these have regular or repetitive geometric features.

These peculiarities offer the chance of a broad market for producing companies and possible economies of scale for public and private customers.

The systems developed in 4RinEU offer real advantages of faster execution and the possibility of not moving the occupants from their apartments during the renovation works, this represents a relevant aspect in general and even more in the social housing sector.

Actors in this field have urgent needs of maintenance and often have to decide between alternatives of demolition or renovation of large residential buildings. Analyses are being developed about this to offer information on the advantages of 4RinEU solutions for deep renovation, related to off-site prefabrication of multifunctional building components for facades and systems and the whole set of solutions developed in the project.

The technology development driven by 4RinEU has reached the goal of defining prototypes, and the first performance measurements are now available. Following these results, 4RinEU started the evaluation of the technologies by mean of the building archetypes, with the definition of the deep renovation packages.

The building archetypes are representative of the building features of the European building stock.  In particular, following the analysis by SINTEF, that selected 24 buildings from the DataTool of the Intelligent Energy Project TABULA, we identified 4 common geometries (envelope dimensions and opaque/transparent ratio) to be adopted as reference. Each geometry will be analysed in each Geo-Cluster, and the specific layers and building features are being implemented (Figure 1).

The renovation packages are based on a set of technologies developed within the project: prefabricated wooden façade with the integration of PV, ST and ventilation devices, Plug&Play Energy Hub, comfort ceiling fans. 4RinEU results are combined with traditional technologies, completing the packages in order to fulfil the requirements in terms of energy saving. In particular, roof insulation, improvement of the efficiency of the heating plant, ground floor insulation and solutions to enhance the airtightness of the building.

Each renovation package is going to be evaluated through a set of Key Performance Indicators dealing with five thematic areas: Energy, Environment, Comfort and Indoor Air Quality, Economic issues and building site management (Table 1).

The results of the simulation set will represent the result basis for the cost effective rating tool under development by SINTEF with the collaboration of Eurac Research, Trecodome and Aiguasol.

Increased renovation rate and energy efficient buildings are important goals in EU countries. Starting a renovation process and making good technical and economic decisions can be challenging. Use of guided choices, comprehensive deep renovation packages, and prefabricated solutions might ease this process.

The multi-criteria ranking tool represents one of the core pieces of 4RinEU. As an early step in the decision process, it is aimed at building owners and investors, guiding them to narrow down their initial ideas about deep renovation of their building.

The development of the tool is done in close collaboration between 4RinEU partners SINTEF, Eurac Research, AIGUASOL. This work is performed in parallel with and using insights from the 4RinEU demonstration cases in 3 different European geo-clusters.

In addition to identifying suitable renovation packages, European experts have defined typical building archetypes for the different regions, with a potential for major energy savings. During the past months, the scope and functionality of the tool were structured and indicators valuable for the users defined.

Based on a selection of suitable renovation packages for their region and building, the tool will take building owners through several steps. With focus on typical energy savings potential and building place / construction impact, it will cursorily assemble indicators from five areas: economics and financial aspects, energy, environment, construction management, comfort and health of the building’s users.

In addition, the tool will give advice on typical failures that may occur with the analysed concepts during different project stages – construction, early usage and remaining lifetime. Taking into account failure risks and the ensuing costs, it expands traditional economic considerations of lifetime costing with assessments of uncertainty.

Information on financial instruments available for the single choices and the effect of these instruments on the project’s economics may ease the decision on embarking on a deep renovation project.

This way, the multicriteria ranking tool can help building owners to see advantages and disadvantages of the single suggestions, set them up against each other and identify a solution with a good trade-off according to their own preferences.