Researchers from the interdisciplinary core group From Socio-Digital Innovation Towards a Just Triple Transition of the Platform of Social Justice and Inclusion have attracted funding from the European Commission (Horizon Europe) to collaborate, in the framework of the international SmartLivingEPC project, in the development of a new Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) in order to get buildings ready for the energy transition.
The transition to zero pollution of the building stock by 2050, smart buildings and digitalisation of buildings are some of the aspects of the built environment to be addressed in order to achieve a more climate neutral building stock over the full life cycle. The sustainable built environment should also go beyond improving the energy efficiency of buildings and include a qualitative and human dimension for the well-being of its users and examine new ways of analysing and assessing the building stock throughout its life cycle. Also, research into energy efficiency in buildings often concentrates on individual buildings, neglecting the impact of the neighbourhood design on the energy performance of buildings and of the neighbourhood as a whole.
SmartLivingEPC proposes to improve existing methodologies and aims to provide a new certificate that will provide a new rating scale based on the actual operation of the building: aspects of lifecycle performance, the assessment of building intelligence and information on the actual performance of building technical systems provided by technical audits. The new generation of EPCs will also collect more holistic information about the building considering aspects that have a high social and environmental impact such as water consumption, noise pollution and air quality
An innovative aspect of SmartLivingEPC will be its application in building complexes, with the aim of energy certification at district level. This complex EPC will include additional aspects following an integrated approach to the participation of neighbours, for example energy communities. In this dimension, DEUSTO’s contribution focuses on the identification and definition of social indicators to estimate the social impacts of a green transition.
The village of Leitza, in Navarre, participates as a pilot community in the SmartLivingEPC project with different types of buildings: private residential housing, small shops and public buildings such as a school, a sports centre and the town hall.