Contents/scope: This topic aims to demonstrate innovative technical, economical and financial solutions to significantly increase overall energy efficiency of cities and districts. The objective is to renovate a district of existing buildings, in support to the Smart Cities initiative.

Retrofitting existing individual buildings to very high performance buildings will result in excessive costs for extremely ambitious levels. Previous programmes have shown high added value and significant economies of scale to optimise a large amount of buildings in a fully integrated concept. Optimising a whole district consisting of a large number of buildings in a fully integrated way, with extension of the building energy management system to the whole district, and including efficient urban planning allows further significant savings. Mixed societies bringing together living with working, leisure, shopping, etc may result in reduced needs for transportation, but also allow for better peak management of energy (energy peaks on offices happen at different times of the day than for private homes), water, wastes, etc. A systemic approach is expected in the measures to be taken. All elements and systems of the buildings that could contribute to a better energy efficiency and sustainability through integrated design and planning should be envisaged, including heat recovery technologies and very efficient water/waste management, enhanced systems for energy behaviour monitoring and demand response and load control systems as well as ICT tools in a district level. Building Information Modelling and other methods of integrated project delivery should also be used. While the proposed measures can encompass all types of buildings (residential, commercial, public) the focus should lie on retrofitting of residential buildings. The retrofitting should be as cost effective as possible. The return on investment for the energy saving measures should be calculated and presented and should be acceptable under current market standards. Priority will be given to buildings of which typology and use could be representative for large geographical areas in Europe.

Innovation should rely in the technologies to be demonstrated and in the innovative integration of the whole city/district with appropriate and cost-effective balance between energy efficiency measures and the integration of active systems for energy generation, distribution, storage and use. For the city area to be affected, detailed information should be provided on the current and future energy use, with emphasis on the building(s): their design, their current and future energy use, the energy efficiency measures to be applied should also be described extensively. The gross floor area of the building(s) should be specified together with the targeted annual energy use per m2 (kWh/m²/year, broken down by space heating, cooling, domestic hot water heating, electricity (including lighting) consumption etc.). In addition to the detailed description of the buildings and the measures to be taken, it is strongly suggested for participants to complete and include in the proposals the Building Energy Specification Table (BEST) summarizing this information for every type of building proposed. The template of the BEST table is made available through the relevant Guide for Applicants.

Successful proposals will be asked to follow a common monitoring data structure, using a common methodology, in order to feed the relevant Commission data bases. Additional accompanying measures affecting the future operation of the building (e.g. behavioural changes, post occupancy evaluation, active training of the occupants, training of professionals and architects in view of the replication of the project in other European regions) should be clearly addressed. Social and economic issues should also be addressed. Buildings utilising thermal masses through their architecture while being of high aesthetic quality that people like to live and work in should be envisaged.

Funding scheme: Funding scheme: Collaborative Project with predominant demonstration component – Scale of Units (CP-SoU)

Implementation/management: The leading role of relevant industrial partners is essential to achieve the full impact of the project. This will be evaluated under the "implementation" and "impact" evaluation criteria.

Expected impact:

• Cost effective highly energy efficient practices, devices (cooling and/or electrical) and techniques.
• Acceleration of the market uptake of the most innovative tools for efficient city energy management.
• Creation of best practice examples for the construction sector based on innovation and competitiveness, with benefits for the operators and the environment.
• Contribution to raise the performance standards and regulations on European, national and local level, in the urban design and construction sector, through the best practice examples.

The projects should have a high potential of replication contributing to large scale market deployment before 2020. It is expected that the successful project(s) will be replicated at the level of the entire city resulting in an accelerated refurbishment rate – double the EU average. An ambitious dissemination and market deployment programme should be included in the proposal. The detailed metering/monitoring programme should last at least for one year, however, longer term commitment and programmes of the building operators (e.g. in continuous monitoring and/or guarantees of performance to the tenants) would give an added value to the proposal. This will be evaluated under the "impact" evaluation criterion.

Additional information: The evaluation of the proposals will also take into account under the "S&T excellence" criterion the degree of excellence and innovation of the technology used, the level of projects ambition and the most cost effectiveness of the practices to be demonstrated (euros/efficiency gain; euros/CO₂ reduction, kWh/m²/year saved). For this reason, the above figures should be indicated in the proposal.

The form of grant applied is based on additional energy efficiency measures in buildings. The grant will always be composed of a combination of: the typical reimbursement of eligible costs, and flat rate financing determined on the basis of scale of unit costs only for the building-related demonstration activities part of the buildings. The scale of unit cost for European Union financial contribution is fixed at EUR 100 /m² eligible costs and thus EUR 50 /m² European Union contribution. The amounts determined on the basis of the scale of unit Costs are reimbursed by applying the upper funding limits specified in Article II.16 of the model grant agreement. Therefore, the reimbursement rate will be up to 50%, i.e. EUR 50/m².

The eligible costs per m² for the building demonstrated in the project(s) are fixed costs. The total of European Union financial contribution based on scale of unit costs may not exceed EUR 15 million per project. This action supports the implementation of the Smart Cities and Communities Initiative of the SET-Plan. The European Commission reserves its right to ask the project, during the negotiation, to establish strong links, where appropriate, with relevant R&D projects at EU, national or regional level.

For further details concerning the implementation of the PPP calls please see Annex 5 of the Cooperation work programme.