General Description

Heating consumption in the residential sector in Europe is around 2300 TWh/y, DHW consumption reaches 500 TWh/y while cooling consumption is less than 100 TWh/y. The construction sector offers unique opportunities to decarbonise the European economy. However, as the replacement rate of the existing stock is very small (1-1.5 % per year), acceleration is needed.

On top of this, the reorganisation of the sector poses tremendous challenges due to its extreme fragmentation: more than 50% of the residential buildings are owned by private single owners. Moreover, whilst few major industrial players are active on the market, it is largely dominated (more than 95%) by SMEs both on the manufacturers’ and the professionals’ side.

BuildHEAT addresses this challenging sector by:

• elaborating systemic packages for the deep rehabilitation of residential buildings
• developing innovative technologies facilitating the implementation of the renovation measures
• developing financial tools enabling large public and private investments
• involving the construction chain from the very beginning and all along the building life cycle.

A set of reliable, energy-efficient and affordable retrofit solutions will be made available, which execution is facilitated by industrialised, modular and flexible HVAC, façade and ICT systems developed.

Despite the affordability, innovative solutions are more expensive compared to off-the-shelf ones. Therefore, financing models are needed to facilitate the massive entry into the market of the new technologies. BuildHEAT aims to leverage large private investments by using European structural funds, thus promoting retrofit actions at the quarter level.

Finally, BuildHEAT involves the entire construction chain – from owners to professionals to investors – in the retrofit process and all along the lifetime of the building, by addressing technical, behavioural, cultural, and economic perspectives. In this way, awareness and involvement are triggered.