ICT for Energy Efficiency

AD-HOC ADVISORY GROUP

Smart Buildings Consultation Group

Interim Report

Jose-Javier de Las Heras / Acciona Alain Zarli / CSTB

31 July 2008

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................... 2 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 5 2. Mission of the Consultation Group .................................................................................... 8 3. State of the art of ICT for Smart Buildings...................................................................... 12 4. Barriers and challenges ahead .......................................................................................... 14 5. ICT –enabled Smart Buildings......................................................................................... 15 6. Customers / Business Cases ............................................................................................. 19 7. Recommendations and conclusion ................................................................................... 20

GLOSSARY – Key terms Building / Building Construction: to be considered in the whole document in a broad perception, which includes houses, residential buildings, office buildings, large infrastructures (harbours, airports, etc.), facilities like tunnels, and up to Urban management. Moreover, Buildings refer to all types of buildings, whether they are new, or being used or to be renovated, either they are residential, tertiary, or industrial. For the sake of simplicity, we will refer in the rest of the document to “Construction” for Buildings, Built Environment and (smart) Facilities.

Smart Building: a new concept of Buildings1 integrating technologies for ambient access2 to all building information made available to all stakeholders anytime and anywhere, and regardless of physical location: office, construction site, home, etc. they are buildings with ICT systems intimately integrated with everyday environments and supporting people in their activities or their daily life. Wireless and powerless sensors should support future “smart, self-configuring and self-adapting home / building”, users needs and requirements (including evolution of users’ profiling) will require special attention, based on advanced technology like pattern recognition and uncertain reasoning. Smart Buildings take into account not only the infrastructure of the building itself (envelope, energy, networks), but also its users (private or professional space) and their needs for communication and services. “Energy-efficient smart building” are to be smart buildings with an optimal management of building energy flows, and over the whole lifecycle, i.e. from construction, through occupancy (between 50 to 100 years) and through demolition (and re-use).

Building Automation: this is a systemic approach that increases and monitor, especially through integration, the interaction of part or all components in the building (mechanical subsystems, elements of the envelope, equipments, and tomorrow embedded systems), so as to improve functions and/or performance of the building (occupant comfort, lower energy use, on-site and off-site building control, etc.). As the building of tomorrow is to be a more and more a complex combination of multiple monitoring and control systems, with connection of disparate systems, building automation is to way to ensure in the future an improved and reliable supervision of buildings.

Building Control / Management System: a system (or an integrated set of systems) that allows in Buildings to deploy and operate Building automation. For instance, typically used in smart buildings to automatically control and adjust the space heating and cooling, the lighting, etc..

1 See ECTP FA7 “Processes & ICT” SRA for a more detailed definition. 2 Ambient access stems from the convergence of 3 key technologies: 1) ubiquitous computing, 2) ubiquitous & secure communication, and 3) intelligent user-friendly interfaces.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS << TBC >>

1. INTRODUCTION

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have an important role to play in reducing the energy intensity3 and therefore increasing the energy efficiency of the economy, in other words, in reducing emissions and contributing to sustainable growth. Indeed emerging changes offer the possibility of modernising the European economy, towards a future where technology and society will be attuned to new needs and where innovation will create new opportunities. ICT will not only improve energy efficiency and help combat climate change, they will also stimulate the development of a large leading-edge market for ICT enabled energy-efficiency technologies that will foster the competitiveness of European industry and create new business opportunities. As ICT is today pervasive to all industrial and business domains, it is expected to generate a deep impact in the energy efficiency of buildings of tomorrow (should they be new or renovated). This document focuses in ICT as a support to energy efficiency in the so-called smart buildings.

It is clear that, if Europe is to succeed and achieve its ambitious objectives4, the role of ICT as an enabler of energy efficiency across the economy5, needs to be fully explored and exploited: Europe needs to ensure that ICT-enabled solutions will be:

- available: most of the technologies are already existing, but they have been developed individually, and more has to be done in terms of integration and proof of concept;

- fully deployed: this means initial deployments in terms of assessment and feedback, and further generalisation of deployments in the built environment;

- operational: all stakeholder should have them installed and perfectly operating, and users aware of these systems and being able to ‘behave with them”, which will probably lead to drastic change in users’ behaviours.

In order to put ICT at the core of the energy efficiency effort and to enable them to reach their full potential, it is necessary to foster research into novel ICT-based solutions and strengthen their take-up — so that the energy intensity of the economy can be further reduced by adding intelligence to components, equipment and services. Therefore, it is essential, as expressed several times through European Commission communications, to reinforce multidisciplinary RTD involving researchers from the ICT, the energy and the building domains, to foster the use of national and regional programmes for the deployment of ICT-enabled research results (like large-scale pilots of energy management systems for public and commercial buildings), and to support awareness raising and foster exchanges of information involving these issues6.

According to the European Union Directive on the energy performance of buildings (EPBD 2002/91/EC), more than 40% of the energy consumption in Europe is due to heating and lighting operations within buildings. Moreover, buildings are the largest source of CO2 emissions in the EU15 (including their electric power consumption). and their total energy consumption has been rising since 19907.

3 this is a measure of energy efficiency of a nation´s economy: EI = Energy units/GDP =MJ/$. 4 As defined at various levels, should it be European (e.g. reducing Energy consumption by 20% by 2020), or national, e.g. in France with the “Grenelle de l’Environnement”: for new houses/buildings, all to be Positive Energy Buildings (PEB) by 2020, with 1/3 with max 50 KWh/m2/an and 10% being PEB ; for non-residential buildings, 50% with less than 50KWh/m2/year and 20% being PEB. For existing houses/buildings, decrease by 2020 the average consumption down to 150 KWh/m2/year (today: 240 KWH/m2), and for non-residential buildings, by 2020, down to 80 KWh/m2/year (today: 220 KWh/m2/year). 5 Which includes fostering the change in citizen's behaviour, as well as in improving efficiency in the use of natural resources while reducing pollution and dangerous waste. 6 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sustainable_growth/docs/com_2008_241_1_en.pdf 7 Fourth National Communication from the European Community under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/eunce4add.pdf

The majority of energy consumption is due to space and water heating within households as illustrated within, although the share of consumption of lighting and appliances is rising over time (this situation is similar within the service sector although the share of lighting and appliance consumption is higher than in households due to greater utilisation of ICT equipment).

Figure 1: Source: EU Odyssee project on energy efficiency indicators8.

Buildings can be considered as energy-intensive systems through their whole life-cycle, being particularly important figures the ones related to the building operation phase, as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: energy consumption at each stage of the building life-cycle.

Taking into account the targets agreed for 2020 in the European Council in 20079, reducing the energy consumption in the buildings is an unavoidable issue to approach in order to fulfil these challenges. In order to achieve this ambition, one of the most important aims that the European Commission points to in its communication “Addressing the challenge of energy efficiency through Information and Communication Technologies” (Brussels, 13.5.2008), is the use of ICT among other technologies.

8 http://www.odyssee-indicators.org 9 The targets are as follows: 20% reduction in emissions compared to 1990 levels; 20% share of renewable energies compared to projections in overall EU energy consumption; and 20% savings in EU energy consumption compared to 2005

According to a recent study10, the worldwide energy consumption for buildings will grow by 45% from 2002 to 2025 – where buildings account for about 40% of energy demand with 33% in commercial buildings and even 67% in residential buildings (see Figure 3). This study is also corroborated by national reports about Climate Change11, which identify the “diffused sectors”12 as the main contributors to Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the next year. The reduction of energy consumption through the use of ICT as key enabler technology is expected to be about 15% in the next years.

Figure 3: worldwide energy consumption for buildings

The report estimates contributions to that reduction figure from different technologies and policies emphasizing that ICT tools for the improvement of energy efficiency in buildings at a design phase and smart building management systems could have the biggest impact.

10 SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age. The Climate Group 11 “Estrategia Española de Cambio Climático y Energía Limpia. Horizonte 2012”. http://www.mma.es/portal/secciones/cambio_climatico/documentacion_cc/estrategia_cc/pdf/estrategia_esp_ccel.pdf 12 “Diffused Sectors” are characterized by compiling a lot of small sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and energy consumptions. Typical examples of “diffused sectors” are transport, building or agriculture.

2. M ISSION OF THE CONSULTATION GROUP

The overall aim of the Smart Buildings Consultation Group is to identify and investigate ways in which ICT can contribute to energy efficiency in the Building and Construction sector, and to identify actions that the Commission can take to reinforce this contribution and accelerate its impact. The conclusions drawn by this concertation Group (through this document and based on various exchanges between well-identified key stakeholders, as introduced below) will indeed feed the outcomes of a (high level) advisory group aiming at providing information on potential as well as recommendations to the EC in terms of ICT for Energy Efficiency. This concertation group is also to be seen, from the “Construction ICT” side, as the channel for involving DG INFSO in the activities the Construction sector needs. The main targeted achievements of the concertation group are:

− Provide a *preliminary* set of references about potential current data and trend analysis of the impact of ICT on EE in the Building sector, taking into account good practices applied worldwide. However, it seems still today difficult to find exhaustive useful references to proven data, but the group should at least provide with some links and demonstrate that this is an ongoing activity in the community: There are various sources about the distribution of energy usage in buildings e.g. convection through the envelope, windows, air leakages, ventilation, lighting, hot water generation, sewage (warm waste water), micro-generators, thermal storage, etc.. This group will explore the (indirect) relations of all these items with ICT e.g. tools for analysis, design, simulation etc. but also new embedded systems based techniques for control and actuation.

– Provide early drafted RTD roadmaps and priorities, potential actions that the Commission could take that would intensify/accelerate the existing trend, including awareness raising and sharing of good practices.

Group participants composition / structure

The structure of the Group is synthesised in the table below:

Chairman: Jose-Javier De Las Heras, Acciona (jherasbu@acciona.es) – "representing" the group in the more horizontal group (Ad-Hoc Advisory Group on ICT for energy efficiency) that will advise the i2010 HLG.

Rapporteurs:

- Matti Hannus, VTT (matti.hannus@vtt.fr)

- Alain Zarli, CSTB (alain.zarli@cstb.fr)

Industry

Company Country Participant name Participant mail

Acciona Spain Jose-Javier De Las Heras

josejavier.heras.bueno@acciona.es

ARUP UK Marta Fernandez Marta.Fernandez@arup.com

OPB (OBERMEYER PLANEN + BERATEN GmbH)

Germany Dr. -Ing. Rudolf Juli

Rudolf.Juli@opb.de

Philips NL Eliav I. Haskal eliav.haskal@philips.com

Schüco International KG

Germany Christian Glatte cglatte@schueco.com

Orange-FT France Gilles Privat gilles.privat@orange-ftgroup.com

Atos Origin (Atos Research & Innovation)

Spain Mélanie Biette

melanie.biette@atosresearch.eu

Mostostal Poland Pawel Poneta p.poneta@mostostal.waw.pl

T-Online

(with Eotvos Lorand University Budapest)

Hungary Akos Kriston kriston.akos@icegel.hu

Alcatel-Lucent Bell NV

Belgium Sven Claes Sven.Claes@Alcatel-Lucent.com

Bouygues France Claude Lenglet claude.lenglet@norpac.fr

Academics & Research centers

Company Country Participant name

Participant mail

CSTB France Alain Zarli alain.zarli@cstb.fr

VTT Finland Matti Hannus matti.hannus@vtt.fr

TU Delft Netherlands Wim Gielingh wgielingh@tiscali.nl

CEA France David Corgier david.corgier@cea.fr

TU Dresden Germany Raimar Scherer raimar.scherer@tu-dresden.de

Labein Spain Juan Perez juan@labein.es

Fraunhofer/Univ. of Stuttgart

Germany Sven Schimpf sven.schimpf@iao.fraunhofer.de

Uninova Portugal Pedro Malo

Celson Lima

pmm@uninova.pt cpl@uninova.pt

Associations of stakeholders (end user associations, local governments,…)

Associations Country Participant name Participant mail

FIVEC / City of Valencia

Spain Manuel Martinez manuel.martinez@fivec.org

ECTP N/A Luc Bourdeau Luc.bourdeau@cstb.fr

ECCREDI Belgium Johan Vyncke Myriam Olislaegers

Johan.vyncke@bbri.be myriam.olislaegers@bbri.be

ACE/CAE13 Belgium Alain Sagne alain.sagne@ace-cae.org

Additional potential candidates:

13 Architects' Council of Europe/Conseil des architectes d'Europe.

Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment

The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment is an educational charity which exists to improve the quality of people’s lives by teaching and practising timeless and ecological ways of planning, designing and building, to reap improvements in public health, in livelier and safer streets and in a more affordable lifestyle for families and individuals.

http://www.princes-foundation.org/

EuroACE European Alliance of Companies for Energy Efficiency in Buildings, involved with the manufacture, distribution and installation of a variety of energy saving goods and services. The mission of EuroACE is to work together with the European institutions to help Europe move towards a more sustainable pattern of energy use in buildings, and therefore to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, one of the principal climate change gases.

http://www.euroace.org/

UK Green Buildings Council

The UK-GBC mission is to dramatically improve the sustainability of the built environment, by radically transforming the way it is planned, designed, constructed, maintained and operated.

http://www.ukgbc.org/

CIRIA - Construction Industry Research and Information Association

CIRIA is a member-based research and information organisation dedicated to improvement in the construction industry. It is a leading provider of performance improvement products & services in the Construction and related industries. CIRIA members include representatives from all parts of the supply chains of the modern built environment, covering building and civil engineering as well as transport and utilities infrastructure.

http://www.ciria.org.uk/

IEA - International Energy Agency

The IEA acts as energy policy advisor to 27 member countries in their effort to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for their citizens.

http://www.iea.org/about/index.asp

Timetable – up to 30th of September 2008

Actions Deadline In charge Comments (optional)

#1 Finalise Concertation Group

18/06 Acciona & CSTB Group can be extended even beyond the deadline.

#2 Participation to the ad-hoc Advisory Group (1st meeting)

26/06 Acciona, CSTB

#3 Working report (draft) 30/06 Acciona, CSTB Mainly based on discussion and outcome from the REEB open Ws at I3Con conf. (15/04), and various documents, including from the EC.

#4 Comments by: - All members of

Concertation Group - Relevant EC officials

21/07 ALL By mail. EC officials to be contacted: - DG ENTR: Antonio

Paparella - DG Research:

Christophe Lesniak - DG TREN:

Jean-Marie Bentgem: Project officer of Innovation – to be confirmed

- DG JRC, Institute for Energy - Arnaud Mercier

#5 Participation to the ad-hoc

Advisory Group (2nd meeting)

24/07 Acciona, CSTB

#6 Interim report 31/07 Acciona, CSTB, VTT #7 Concertation group

workshop (organised by REEB & ECTP/FA7)

11/09 Acciona, VTT, CSTB At ECPPM 2008 conference – potentially with invited additional participants

#8 Participation to the ad-hoc Advisory Group (3rd meeting)

25/09 Acciona, CSTB, VTT

#9 Final report 30/09 Acciona, CSTB, VTT

3. STATE OF THE ART OF ICT FOR SMART BUILDINGS

The R&D targeting the EE in future smart buildings is to be developed around the following fundamental pillars:

• The “intelligent” objects: these objects must have embedded electronic chips, as well as the appropriate resources (including potential OS or platform such as J2ME) to achieve local computing and interact with the outside, therefore being able to manage appropriate protocol(s) so as to acquire and supply information.

• The communications: these must allow sensors, actuators, indeed all intelligent objects to communicate among them and with services over the network. They have to be based on protocols that are standardised and open.

• The “smart BMS / ECMS14”: relying on embedded intelligent objects and communications, they are to be new systems characterised not only by improved features (e.g. optimising the equation EE/duration/cost), but being able to communicate by embedding appropriate tags (RFID, etc.), and to improve global monitoring of complex assembling of products and equipments in the built environment. They have to potentially allow dynamic control & (re-)configuration of devices (based on strategies), through new algorithms and architectures for any configuration of smart devices (i.e. any set of such devices being inter-connected) to be able to dynamically evolve according to the environment or change in a choice of a global strategy. Ultimately, networks of such BMC/ECMS are to be the foundations of self-configuring home & building systems for EE, based on architectures where Component-based in-house systems learn from their own use and user behaviour, and are able to adapt to new situations, locating and incorporating new functionality as required, including the potential use of pattern recognition to identify and prioritise key issues to be addressed, and to identify relevant information.

• The multimodal interactive interfaces: the ultimate objective of those interfaces is to make the in-house network as simple to use as possible, thanks to a right combination of intelligent and interoperable services, new techniques of man-machine interactions (ambient intelligence, augmented/dual reality, tangible interfaces, robots, and so on), and learning technologies for all communicating objects. These interfaces should also be means to share ambient information spaces or ambient working environments thanks to personal advanced communication devices. They should adapt to the available attention of users, using and avoid overloading their "cognitive bandwidth" with unnecessary warnings or redundant feedbacks.

The development of these pillars has to be based on the current legacy and State of the Art, which includes:

• Wired and wireless sensors: lots of various remote controlled devices, with the use of such devices (HVAC, lighting, audio-video equipments…) being currently investigated in the built environment through preliminary deployment and experimentations.

• Wireless and wireline connection models & protocols: still under development and even more looking for harmonisation and standardisation (NFC - Near Field Communication, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, RFID, ZigBee, Z-Wave, en Ocean, PLC, etc.), they aim at establishing and managing communication between objects.

• Proprietary platforms & networks: current platforms implementing connected objects are mainly experimental platforms, with no standardisation of management of and communication between any kind of “intelligent” objects. There are already developments around de-facto standard platforms or execution environments, but these are still mainly at an experimental level.

14 Building Management Systems / Energy Control Management Systems.

• “Dumb” legacy services: all services deployed by the industry so far are specialised / dedicated services that ensure one given function, without providing interoperability, and no capacity to “talk” with other services or to take into account the full environment.

• Multimodal context-aware interfaces / devices: still few intelligent objects that are not intrusive and offer appropriate interfaces to allow the final user to seamlessly integrate the ubiquitous network.

The figure below synthesises the current state-of-the-art regarding the identified pillars:

Figure 4: technologies for the smart buildings.

4. BARRIERS AND CHALLENGES AHEAD

As a first step, both problems and barriers for the ICT for Energy Efficiency massive deployment in buildings shall be identified. The following problem areas are identified15:

− Inadequate ICT-based informed decision-making (both human and automated) in the current delivery and use of sustainable and energy-efficient facilities, with issues related to Data and Information (D/I): availability, appropriateness of D/I Source, reliability, D/I collection methods and integration, transfer (between actors and between applications), transformation, use and delivery to stakeholders, etc.;

− Current delivery and use of facilities do not necessarily lead to sustainable and energy-efficient buildings, due to:

o Lack of (common) agreement of what sustainable and energy-efficient buildings are; o Too many standards regulating buildings that affect delivery and use, with some being

in conflict with others towards achieving sustainability and energy-efficiency; o Lack of (common) agreement on holistic and systems-based view of buildings, and of

industry agreement on measurement and control; o Too many options to choose from regarding environmental systems and their

configurations; o Decision-making not supported by adequate information, in a context of complex and

difficult automation. − Need for occupancy feedback to user to enable behaviour modification towards sustainability

and energy efficiency, including definition of user requirements and preferences, dynamic and personalized environmental controls, visualization of data associated with energy use, etc.;

− Need for management of energy types and distribution in buildings and urban areas, including integration of sources of energy, and balancing and optimization of energy sources and uses;

− Inadequate D/I on, and methods for establishing, sustainability, energy efficiency, and other attributes of materials and products used in facilities, including assessment, smart labelling, logistics, etc..

Additionally, some of the barriers identified16, related to future business models based on ICT, are:

− Lack of incentives for architects, builders, developers and owners to invest in smart building technology from which they will not benefit;

− Unclear business case and absence of business models supporting/promoting investments on energy efficiency: energy consumption is a small part of building cost structure, yet building automation costs can be high and payback periods are often long;

− The buildings sector is slow to adopt new technology – a 20-25-year cycle for residential units and a 15-year cycle for commercial buildings is typical;

− A lack of skilled technicians to handle complex BMS – most buildings of less than 10,000 sq ft (930 sq metres) do not have trained operating staff;

− As each building is designed and built as unique, it is difficult to apply common standards for efficiency and operations;

− Lack of incentives for energy companies to sell less energy and encourage efficiency among customers.

The current gaps and foreseen Research/ Technological challenges related to ICT for energy-efficiency in the built environment include:

− Systems-thinking, multi-stakeholder, and multi-disciplinary design and construction of sustainable and energy-efficient facilities;

15 International Workshop on Global Roadmap and Strategic Actions for ICT in Construction. 22-24 August 2007, Helsinki, Finland 16 SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age. The Climate Group

− Pre-designed/engineered, replicable, and flexible environmental systems solutions, e.g. optimization, adaptation, and scaling to specific context applications, and configuration tools to do so;

− Cost-effective deployment of specific ubiquitous sensing networks – along with the seamless adaptation of moving environment context, e.g. adding or removing resources;

− Incorporation of the human dimension (for instance, needs from the end-users) in ICT, especially through solutions that are “accepted” by the user, e.g. with systems naturally interacting with the user (voice, avatar, …), with systems having the capacity to learn and adapt themselves to the way of living or working, with dynamic adaptability to the user specificity (handicap, health, age,…), etc. – overall issues related to human activity and energy efficiency, and to the design of interfaces accordingly;

− Adaptation to the user's instantaneous activity , situation and context; − Understanding and development of quantitative tools that match reality; − Scaled and selective mining, as well as visualisation, of D/I within large databases, along with

integration of disparate databases; − Development of mature cross-domain / multi-disciplinary software tools and ICT-based

services for industry; − Development of formal models for performance metrics for sustainability and energy-

efficiency in buildings and urban areas.

5. ICT –ENABLED SMART BUILDINGS

Recent researches17 regarding intelligent management systems inside buildings, among other ICT applications, have shown that important energy savings can be reached using these technologies. The use of these intelligent systems inside buildings can improve the control and management of heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, and other energy-hungry devices. Applying novel ICT solutions for control systems and home automation promises to have an impact on electricity demand at the level of households and much more at the level of publicly owned buildings which are professionally managed. Building control systems enable the integrated interaction of a number of technological elements such as heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, safety equipment etc. The embedding of ambient intelligence in building, thanks to advances in nanotechnologies, sensors, wireless communications and data processing contributes to for instance better temperature management, leading to reduced energy consumption. Five key horizontal aspects of how ICT can improve energy efficiency of buildings are connectivity, flexibility, transparency, and miniaturisation18, leading to ambient intelligence. During the ECTP/REEB19 Workshop held in Loughborough, UK as part of the I3CON Conference, stakeholders from the whole value chain including Energy Efficiency, ICT and construction pointed out the need of research initiatives targeting the topics described in the following sub-sections:

5.1. Design and simulation tools Integrating the whole life cycle of buildings into a holistic approach to improve energy efficiency is a usual demand from the stakeholders. However, little advances have been made on this topic. For that purpose, an appropriate ontology for the domain is needed as well as using Building Information Models including energy simulations across the entire life of the building.

17 Emerging Trend Update 3. The Role of ICT as Enabler for Energy Efficiency EPIS Work Package 1 – Deliverable 1.3 ETU. JRC 18 Impacts of Information and Communication Technologies on Energy Efficiency. Bio-intelligence Service 19 REEB (European strategic research Roadmap to ICT enabled Energy-Efficiency in Buildings and constructions) - FP7 funded project.

When new buildings are built, designers can apply ICT tools to plan buildings that minimize energy consumption – e.g. simulating and optimizing envelope measures and passive solar heating techniques – achieving significant improvements in buildings’ energy performance. Studies undertaken in Europe highlighted that designers can achieve significant improvements in building’s energy performance if they apply ICT tools to plan buildings that minimize energy consumption – e.g. simulating and optimizing envelope measures and passive solar heating techniques - designers can achieve significant improvements in building’s energy performance. In moderately cold climates, such as the ones of Central Europe, for example, heating needs can be reduced from over 200 kWh/m2/year to less than 15 kWh/ m2/year20 In addition to the opportunities that derive from efficiency gains, such as the ones described above, reductions of GHG21 emissions can be obtained if new buildings are designed to also utilize, as much as possible, renewable energy sources available locally (e.g. with PV systems, solar heater systems, urban turbines or geothermal systems) or to utilize the grid when more renewable energy is being delivered to the grid. Overall there is a significant potential to achieve efficiency gains and reductions of GHG emission with new buildings, where:

1. ICT tools can be deployed to design and plan buildings that fit within the environments in which they are built;

2. During their operational phase, advanced ICT solutions (embedded into buildings) adapt the buildings’ behaviour and performance for optimisation taking into account the external environment and to the needs of their users.

Such benefits could be even higher when ICT-based design tools and embedded ICT technologies are applied not at a building scale, but at a larger scale to improve city planning or to design new communities. Thanks to improved processing power, data availability and software capabilities, ICT applications can be used to simulate and analyse holistically complex urban systems and seek solutions that increase quality of life while reducing overall energy use and generating a minimum amount of GHG emissions.

5.2. Interoperability/standards Today, most control systems are based on micro-processor technology. Sensors, for example, for determination of temperature or flow rates, are typically connected to the control system by wires. The algorithms implemented in the control system are wide ranging, from simple temperature difference control functions to complex self-optimising strategies. The most significant weakness of current control systems is that, in most cases, separate controllers are used for each application. For instance, there are often three controllers for solar thermal, space heating and cooling, or the air-conditioning system. Typically, the individual controllers operate separately, without exchanging information and, as a consequence, the building is not considered and controlled as one single system, but as a number of individual sub-systems. This leads to sub-optimal results in terms of energy flow, comfort, cost and controllability22. The most appropriate solution would be one single control system, governing all HVAC, lighting and other electrical applications, and related sub-systems installed in a building. The main barrier to this logical solution is the fact that the different sub-systems are manufactures and often installed by different companies.

20 The potential global CO2 reductions from ICT use. Identifying and assessing the opportunities to reduce the first billion tonnes of CO2 – from WWF (World Wide Fund). 21 Green House Gas. 22 European Solar Thermal Technology Platform Strategic Research Agenda

Furthermore, there is still inadequate development of standardisation for the interfaces and communication, even between the sensors and actuators.

5.3. Building automation In the area of home automation, which is primarily perceived as improving life quality (e.g. more comfortable, safer homes), ICT should contribute to energy efficiency through the use of improved control and management systems based on smart appliances and communication networks. Individually adaptable building control would be required to improve user awareness about energy savings Building control systems are intended to improve the quality of comfort, health and safety conditions of indoor environments in an effective and efficient manner. In contrast to passive energy efficiency measures (e.g. insulation) and conventional heating/cooling technologies, building control systems have been introduced to ensure the integrated interaction of a much broader range of technological elements (HVAC - heating, ventilating, air conditioning - lighting, life safety equipment, architecture), and of humans who live/work in them in order to influence the indoor environment. Recent developments in nanotechnology (e.g. windows, surfaces), sensor/actuator technology, wireless communication technology, and data processing and control have enabled the embedding of ambient intelligence in buildings. Energy efficiency may not be the only motivation behind the introduction of building control systems, but it is certainly an important one, driven by cost considerations too. Moreover, in professionally managed building, cost considerations tend to support the interest in reducing energy (and electricity) consumption. Although the initial investments in advanced building control systems can be quite significant, declining costs for sensors, actuators and ICT equipment in conjunction with the cost savings over the life-time of the equipment tend to make the introduction of building control systems a promising investment. Investment in intelligent building control systems must be compared to other investment options in energy efficiency. Moreover, the right level of sophistication needed for building control systems may be a source of debate. Comparatively simple building control systems may be sufficient to reap quite significant economic benefits. This is a strong argument especially in relation to the upgrading of existing buildings, where the retrofitting of major new physical components may be difficult, but some soft ICT-based measures are comparatively easy to implement. For instance, ICT applications for heating management have a high potential impact on the rational use of heating energy. Heating accounts for roughly 30% of total energy consumption, and the most effective conservation measures using physical materials tend only to be applied to the small annual share of buildings that is renovated or newly built. ‘Soft measures’ using ICT (such as intelligent heating systems) have the advantage of being applicable in all kinds of buildings, both old and new, and could therefore have a significant effect. The use of ICT applications for heat management should therefore be a priority for future research and development. It is worth mentioning that recent studies have shown dissimilarities (and therefore exhibited different figures) according to the type of buildings. Case Study: Residential HVAC:

− Passive and active thermal wall insulation: no quantification of Energy Saving Potential by ICT applications;

− Switchable mirror film on windows: no quantification of Energy Saving Potential by ICT applications;

− Temperature monitoring and heating control: energy consumption saving for up to 89% (of current consumption).

One can assume for residential HVAC systems average annual savings by 15% or about 47 Mtoe by the year 2020. This equals to 67.8 Mt CO2 eq. emission.

Case study: Commercial HVAC:

− Integrated cooling of ICT infrastructure equipment:energy consumption saving in most cases from 25% to 50% - average approximately 30% of total energy consumption.

− Integrated control of clean room conditions: improvement potential of 30% (same as above) In that case, one can assume for service sector HVAC systems a realistic average annual savings by 20% or about 18.5 Mtoe by the year 2020. This equals 23.7 Mt CO2 eq. emission.

5.4. Smart metering Smart metering enables more accurate measurement of consumption via the use of advanced meters which are connected to a central unit through a communications network, improving data collection for billing purposes. In addition smart metering provides information on consumption patterns contributing to more sustainable consumption and energy savings. A smart meter generally refers to a type of advanced meter that identifies consumption in greater detail than a conventional meter, and communicates this information via the network back to the local utility for monitoring and billing purposes (Automated Meter Reading, AMR). Using smart meters merely for data collection and billing purposes does not fully exploit their potential. In fact smart meters close the information gap for understanding energy use pattern and implementing more efficient control mechanisms. They are offering to the customers (of both electricity and gas) the following additional advantages:

• More accurate bills (i.e. avoid bills based on estimated use); • Information that could help them use less energy and encourage investment in energy efficiency; • Lower costs through reduced peak consumption, because this would reduce the need for new

network investment; • Increased security of supply because the less energy is used, the less is needed; • More sustainable consumption through reduced carbon emissions.

Smart metering systems are being marketed by commercial companies, allowing for instance comparison of energy consumption between branches of a company, or enabling individual users to see their consumption pattern and adopt appropriate measures for energy saving. In most European countries energy consumption is still measured with conventional or induction-type, meters that can only measure the overall consumption. With these meters it is, therefore, not possible to measure the individual energy demand over time. The EU directive on energy end-use efficiency and energy services, however, requests the installation of individualised meters that can inform end-users about their actual energy consumption. The changed framework conditions offer new market opportunities. Energy suppliers and other enterprises set up metering companies that offer their services not only to their own network branches but also to third parties. Large service enterprises that already offer metering services for the heat market develop concepts for entering the market for gas and electricity metering. Examples of smart metering in Europe and abroad23 UK A consortium is planning an AMR pilot project with approximately 1000 household

customers. The project aims at reading existing meters optically and transmitting the data over TV cable or satellite links. Over TV cable power supplier receives metering data while customers receive information about tariffs, which are displayed on the TV set. If only a satellite link is available metering data is transmitted over GPRS or another packet switched network.

23 Baldock, M.; Fenwick, L. (2006). Domestic Metering Innovation. Consultation Report. London: Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem).

Italy Over a 5-year period beginning in 2000 and ending in 2005 Enel invested 5 billion EUR for deploying smart meters to its entire customer base (30 million). Motivation: Cost savings for administration, reduction of electricity theft, stabilisation of the grid by reducing peak load during summer time. Enel is offering their customers a multitude of different tariffs. Meters were developed together with IBM and include a PLC modem for transmitting data to a so-called concentrator, which acts as the interface to existing IP-networks. Most meters are read via a GSM link because this network has the broadest coverage.

Netherlands The Dutch ministry of economic affairs has decided in February 2006 to replace all electricity and gas meters by AMR systems. For the implementation a project group was installed that analyses the main advantages of AMR systems and defines the main functionalities.

Canada The Ontario Energy Board in Ontario, Canada has actively strived to define the technology and develop the regulatory framework around their implementation. Smart meters will be installed in 800,000 homes by 2007, with an eventual goal of 100% penetration by 2010.

5.5. User-awareness tools One of the main actions to improve energy efficiency lies on the need of intuitive feedback to users on real time energy consumption in order to change behaviour on energy-intensive systems usage. Different studies have shown that a reduction of 5-15% of energy consumption could be achieved24 through the implementation of this measure. In addition, there is a need to ensure the acceptance of embedded systems and other ICT-based solutions at home through the use of human-centric graphic interfaces for different user profiles (age, cultural level, etc.) It is also critical that users do not get bombarded by a barrage of feedback data about something that they do not require in the first place : information provided by the system should be unobtrusive, and attuned to the user's available attention, taking into account both his/her activity and the urgency of the information that is notified to him.

6. CUSTOMERS / BUSINESS CASES

In the area of business and trading, detailed analysis of potential impacts of ICT-based solutions on Energy Efficiency is needed as well as the creation of energy saving business models supporting ICT. Last but not least, local building energy trading would have a definitive impact on the way energy is generated and distributed moving the building from a demand side to a prosumer (producer+consumer) profile. In the Final report (September 2008), the cases will be detailed according the 3 main targets: Residential housing, offices / commercial buildings, and public buildings, describes in the following sub-sections.

6.1. Residential sector

6.2. Offices/Commercial buildings

6.3. Public buildings 24 The Effectiveness Of Feedback On Energy Consumption. A Review For Defra Of The Literature On Metering, Billing And Direct Displays. Sarah Darby, April 2006

7. RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION

A preliminary (and not exhaustive) set of recommendations can be drawn – that will be largely developed and detailed in the final report. They can be structured in two main parts:

- recommendations in terms of key axis / topics for future RTD; - recommendations addressing potential European initiatives to be supported by the EC.

7.1 Recommendations for future RTD topics

Quite a set of technologies and (partial) solutions already exist or are under development, and obviously what is drastically missing is tools and services for an integrated approach so as to reduce energy consumptions (and GHG emissions) from the diverse and fragmented building sector. Such an approach must coordinate across technical and policy solutions, integrate engineering approaches with architectural design, consider design decisions within the realities of building operation, integrate green building with smart-growth concepts, and takes into account the numerous decision-makers within the industry. Moreover, many measures are today taken to reduce the operational energy of buildings, making embodied energy increasingly important. Embodied energy in buildings and building materials is an important point to address: about 10% of all CO2 emissions globally comes from the production of building materials. In particular steel, concrete (cement), bricks and glass require very high production temperatures that can only be reached today by the burning of fossil fuels. Additionally, one have to take notice that design and planning decisions can have a huge impact on the energy consumption of buildings. In striving to make the highest profit, for instance, project developers tend to build medium to high rise buildings on a piece of land. Such buildings require elevators that consume a huge portion of energy during their operational life. All in all, a comprehensive and systemic view needs to consider future construction including life-cycle aspects (of buildings materials, design, and demolition), use (including on-site power generation and its interface with the electric grid), and location (in terms of urban densities and access to employment and services). When studying the range of technologies, it is important to consider the entire building system and to evaluate the interactions between the technologies. In this context, improved techniques for integrated building analyses and new technologies that optimize the overall building system are especially important. A comprehensive view to be developed will have to especially integrate considerations on:

1. Inside the building: - HVAC; - lighting; - water heating; - appliances & electronic equipments - inside use / user behaviour

2. At the intersection of the building and its environment: - the envelope of the building;

3. Outside the building: - integration in the future distributed electric grid; - alternative urban design(s)25 – i.e. the spatial arrangement of buildings in communities and

urban systems can play an important role in energy consumption and GHG reduction. The table below is a first start to synthesise this view (to be further developed in the final report):

25 Towards a Climate-Friendly Built Environment – Report from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, June 2005

<< this table is a draft to be further completed >> Field Functionalities Energy: Systems architecture & networks

New architectures of installation /distribution of water, electricity, gas, heat, VDI

modularity – auto-configuration (new source, load) self-checking: self-diagnosis; alarms; remote maintenance Management Autonomous management of the sources and load/remote control

Management, intelligence, communication function of origin components: electricity/hot/cold = f(weather, electricity gas price,…)

Management, intelligence, communication function of load components including thermal devices (radiators, air-conditioners, doors, windows, shutters, walls,…) electric household appliances

Global Management, sources and load / control, (information feedback), maintenance remote billing

energy integration of the building in its district: global energy approach and “intelligent” versus energy market

Support:

Multimedia (voice, image, data): simplified connectivity and interfaces, speed connection, high reliability

development of means of storing to manage to recover, distribute (in housing) in an intuitive and personalized way the masses of audio-video data

Response “to the context”, personalization (atmosphere, mood, type of activity, user profile…): thermal, visual, sound comfort multi-sensorial interactions, friendly robots

Developing means to store, manage, recover, distribute audio video data (in housing) in an intuitive and customised way

Remote Education/Training – typically, current building practices seriously lag best practices. Thus, vigorous market transformation and deployment programs are critical to success, and to ensure that the next generation of low-energy / low-GHG innovations is rapidly and extensively adopted.

7.2 Recommendations addressing potential European initiatives to be supported by the EC � Increase synergies and potential of collaborations between multiple actors and partners in the fields of building construction, energy efficiency and ICT. Partnerships should be supported and favoured, including public-private partnerships. In this sense, Joint Technology Initiatives are powerful tools to support this kind of collaboration, particularly:

- ARTEMIS JTI26, which has been approved by the EC, has established a priority research topic within its work-programme dealing with Embedded Systems for Sustainable Urban Life, including new electronic devices for supporting Energy Efficiency in Buildings among other services such as security;

- E2B (Energy Efficient Buildings) JTI, currently under elaboration, which objective is to deliver and implement building and district concepts that have the technical, economic and societal potential to cut the energy consumption in existing and new buildings by 50 % within 2030, thereby contributing to improve the energy independence of EU. To reach this goal implies a strong identification and development of new technologies and materials that are needed to realise the building concepts. These technologies include ICT as a key element.

26 https://www.artemisia-association.org/

The figure below details the context for future RTD and innovation developments in Europe:

Figure 5: a tentative global picture of European coordinated RTD in ICT for Smart buildings ( draft).

� Provide incentives to favour information sharing and collaborative developments at a trans-national level (leading to collaborative European RTD, but taking into account specificities of countries and providing opportunities of sharing of experiences and good practices), as well as International cooperation. � Develop instruments to create a critical mass of research, development and innovation at EU level in the areas of ICT-based technologies and services for energy efficiency in buildings, with the establishment of a favourable environment for participation of construction SMEs that could act as “front-runners” in Construction for the prescription and deployment of new optimised solutions in Buildings. An important effort is currently being done in this sense with the potential creation of a Joint Technology Initiative on Energy Efficiency in Buildings27 where one of the main research topics is the integration of ICT-based solutions for Energy Efficiency. � Support the development and integration of technical ICT-based solutions, especially by:

- accompanying the construction industry in the innovation process (after the RTD phase), by providing a coherent European framework for developing common approaches, with common European standards, and the localisation and adaptation of common solutions which have to be compatible with varying environmental contexts, social (user) preferences and regulatory aspects at national or regional level across Europe;

- valorising the ICT-based solutions by helping and pushing standardisation, evaluation and certification of packages, digital services (in buildings) and processes – overall with the development of labels. The evaluation should be relying on the usage value of technical solutions, for instance through large-scale pilots, user panels, development of showrooms, education, etc.

27 http://www.e2b-jti.eu

Relevant Initiatives (to be further included in a separate Annex)

Relevant initiatives including best practices and real use cases will be reviewed within this Consultation Group. Some of them are included in the following table: Relevant initiatives in ICT for energy efficiency in

Buildings Main characteristics

Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings – EPBD (European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive)

European Commission initiative in the framework of the Intelligent Energy - Europe (2003-2006) programme, which provides information services for practitioners and consultants, experts in energy agencies, interest groups and national policy makers in the European Member States for helping the implementation of the EPBD. www.buildingsplatform.org

ENERGYSAFE (FP6): Development of a new low cost retrofittable wireless and self-powered building control system for improving energy efficiency employee comfort and fire safety in commercial buildings. Built upon wireless control HVAC and lighting conditions and adapted to individual user preferences. Furthermore, it will create individual comfort zones and will be able to locate occupants in case of fire or other emergency.

EUREC - European Renewable Energy Centres Agency � an EEIG representing European Research Centres active in renewable energy from across Europe

EUREC (www.eurec.be) rationalise the European research, demonstration and development efforts in all renewable energy technologies. Several projects & initiatives, including: - ProRETT (SSA under FP6) dedicated

to the promotion of Renewable Energy Technology Transfer

- Pisa II - EU-sponsored initiative for stimulating the debate on integration of photovoltaics in buildings and for communication and dissemination. This is a joint initiative of the Architect's Council of Europe (ACE) and EUREC

European Program Energy Star - e-Star (aligned with the US Energy Star initiative)

A new Regulation that requires EU institutions and central Member State government authorities to use energy efficiency criteria no less demanding than those defined in the ENERGY STAR (US) programme when purchasing office equipment. www.eu-energystar.org

ALLP28 demonstrator 3000m² building renovated with ICT integration for energy management. www.genhepi.com

AUZENER -Model for virtual simulation of energy balance of urban communities focused on its energy and economical optimisation

Simulation of the energy performances of a district

SIGE: Intelligent Systems for energy management. Spanish Ministry of Industry

SIGE develops a monitoring and control system or intelligent control management in buildings.

STAND-INN: Integration of performance based building standards into business processes using IFC standards to enhance innovation and sustainable development.

STAND-INN focus on the advantages of the IFC data model in order to increase building sector sustainability.

Umbrella initiative "zukunft haus" (http://www.zukunft-haus.info only in German) � can be roughly translated as "Future House".

Conducted by the German Energy Agency DENA Also linked to the European green building initiative (for non residential buildings)

28 Association Lyonnaise de Logistique Post-hospitalière.