EFFESUS - energy efficiency for EU historic districts sustainability

The EFFESUS concept is to reduce the environmental impact of Europe's valuable urban heritage by making significant improvements to its energy efficiency while conserving and even promoting the cultural, historic, urban and architectural values of European's historic cities. The overall objective is to develop and demonstrate, through case studies, a methodology and criteria for selecting and prioritizing energy efficiency interventions. These will be based on existing and new cost-effective technologies and systems compatible with heritage values, and thus significantly improve the life cycle energy efficiency in the rehabilitation of historic districts. The selected case studies are located in cities with different climate zones and range from Santiago de Compostela to Genova, Budapest and Istanbul, from Bamberg, to Visby and Glasgow. The main goal of EFFESUS is to develop and demonstrate, through case studies a methodology for assessing and selecting energy efficiency interventions, based on existing and new technologies that are compatible with heritage values. The environment in historic buildings and urban districts is controlled differently from modem cities and accordingly a multi-scale data model for the management of energy is developed along with a decision support system for building owners, communalities and other stakeholders. In addition, new non-invasive, reversible yet costeffective technologies for significantly improving thermal properties are investigated. Finally, solutions for overcoming non-technical barriers in the context of market implementation are being developed by EFFESUS. Amongst coherent market launch strategies for the further or newly developed technologies and services along the value chain, target-group specific strategies for a continuous dialogue between the various stakeholders involved are in the focus. The intention is to avoid conflicts as well as developments that do not meet the needs of the market.