PROBONO
The Integrator-centric approach for realising innovative energy efficient buildings in connected sustainable green neighbourhoods
Building and renovating in an energy and resource efficient way towards the goals of the European Green Deal
Vision.
To deliver scalable, sustainable and viable energy-positive and zero-carbon Green Building Neighborhoods (GBNs). Probono will demonstrate how a people-centered, green, and sustainable approach to renovation may inspire sustainable neighbourhoods and community well-being. Sustaining both nature and humanity in natural equilibrium for our mutual benefit and common future.
The challenge.
The growth of the green building market has been hampered by challenges such as the high upfront cost of Green Building (GB) construction, access to funds, societal barriers, and a lack of information, experience, and incentives. Discrepancies in assessments regarding economic viability also explains the slow penetration of GB in most economies.
Evidence suggests that GBs can be profitable throughout the course of a building's life cycle; nevertheless, their precise economic viability remains unknown, particularly from the viewpoints of developers and occupiers, due to a lack of knowledge and legislative uncertainties.
Sustainability has become a domain of complex embedded concepts in the green building agenda, highlighting the need for working with new technologies and services through fully integrated processes that manage the planning, design, manufacturing, construction, and operational steps of a building's life cycle.
High GB construction cost
Lack of knowledge
Social Barriers
Approach & solutions.
To address this challenge, PROBONO will provide five GBN Transition Acceleration Enablers, deployed in six high impact and people-focused real-life large-scale Living Labs (LLs) (leveraging existing projects and/or approved renovation plans). Enablers will help GBNs to reach zero emission and energy positive levels by 2030. LL outputs will be feeding into a transferability and innovation replication framework that will enhance the transition capabilities of local communities.
The five PROBONO Enablers include:
- Green Building Neighbourhoods Strategic Planning
- Social Engagement and Innovation clusters
- Green Building Neighbourhood Construction & Renovation
- Green Building Neighbourhood Green Energy Monitoring
- Green Building Neighbourhoods Digitalisation Platform - Digital Twins
The project will expand on the possibilities of GBNs by specifically considering building typologies in the context of the non-residential sector.
LIVING LABS
Large-scale, iterative, open-innovation ecosystems that operate in a territorial setting.
PROBONO Living Labs integrate concurrent research and innovation processes as part of a public-private-people cooperation.
The project will deliver a GBN Digital Twin (DT) that will be implemented across the LLs as a virtual representation of connected GBN assets, including operational assets that affect environmental and efficiency KPIs.
To produce an optimised design for carbon-neutral energy GBN systems combining PROBONO novel solutions on GBN demand and response dynamics, a cloud-based decision support-planning tool will be developed.
Dublin LL
Improving the energy performance by considering energy inefficiency in older municipal buildings.
Madrid LL
Achieving the Energy Positive building status for residential and commercial buildings, and fostering a strategy to ensure that MNN (Madrid Nuevo Norte) becomes a neutral district.
Porto LL
Experimenting with solutions that are not market-ready yet but have market potential, aiming for high social, economic and environmental impact and replicability.
Brussels LL
Showing the positive impact of data-driven knowledge on sustainability decision-making through the management and operation of the Auderghem school, in such areas as facilities, sustainable procurement, mobility and circular economy approaches.
Aarhus LL
Developing and testing in actual buildings while keeping functional architecture intact, translating research into building industry relevant products, prototyping green deal transitional examples.
Prague LL
Exploring the solutions developed in Aarhus and extending their DT models to cover the built infrastructure and energy flows.
Our role.
Inlecom holds the role of the Technical Coordinator and is responsible for managing the Living Labs and the Innovation tasks of the project. Inlecom is also involved in the production of the GBN Digitalisation Platform including GBN Digital Twins, which will consist of interoperable representations of GBNs in the digital realm.
This project has received funding from the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under GA 101037075. Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
