QualDeEPC has completed one third of its duration, time to take a brief look at the (interim) results and activities of the first project year:
In October 2019, the QualDeEPC consortium representing ten institutions from eight countries held its kick-off meeting in Brussels, Belgium. During interactive and fruitful workshop sessions the 20 attendees did not only set the path of QualDeEPC as a project, e.g. discussing methodologies and state of the art at national level, but the scope of engagement and deliverables of the partners.
Early in 2020, the first series of QualDeEPC national workshops was successfully conducted in Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Spain and Sweden. The expert workshops were held with the aim to develop priorities of options for an improved user-oriented design of EPCs by compiling the shortcomings of existing EPC schemes at national level and opportunities for their improvement in the respective countries.
In June 2020, QualDeEPC concluded the work on the analysis of current practices and priorities for next-generation EPC’s (WP2) resulting in the following four public deliverables:
- D2.1 Report on local EPC situation and cross-country comparison matrix
- D2.2 Report on EPC best practices
- D2.3 Report on EPC short-comings and national priority approaches to their resolution
- D2.4 Development Strategy Plan for the development of next generation EPC schemes
The results are the basis for the development of enhanced EPC schemes, which is currently ongoing, and thereby indirectly for forthcoming testing, dialogue, implementation, and dissemination activities of the project. Especially, D2.4 the development strategy plan, serves as a guide for the development phase and the elaboration of an enhanced EPC scheme, the tools and in particular the Deep Renovation Network Platforms. Work is in full swing towards the next milestone, the QualDeEPC Green paper for an enhanced EPC scheme.
Like all ongoing H2020 projects, QualDeEPC has faced the limitations in research related work and project management due to covid-19. While face-to-face partner meetings could be transferred to online events, some work package progresses were partly on hold due to the restricting national regulations.
Although the partners cooperated exclusively digital at this time, the consortium was able to exchange and discuss results to commonly work on project outputs. The priorities for enhanced EPC schemes for example were discussed in detail during the second digital QualDeEPC project meeting at the beginning of April 2020. The event was split in two days focussing on the one hand on WP2, which addresses the analysis of current EPC practices and priorities for next-generation EPCs and on the other hand on WP3 the development of enhanced EPC schemes, WP4 the testing of the applicability through pilot cases as well as WP6 the project’s communication and dissemination.
Other events like the joint webinar “Catalysing the EU Renovation Wave in the transition to the next-generation Energy Performance Certificates” hosted by BUILD UP, the European Portal For Energy Efficiency In Buildings, were also conducted online. The webinar gave insights on how QualDeEPC and its two sister projects U-CERT and X-tendo approach the development and challenges entailed to enhanced EPC schemes. Watch online:
