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There are international activities and on-going initiatives, particularly at the European level, to define what Positive Energy Districts should be, as the driving concept for the urban transition to a sustainable future. The first objective of the paper is to contribute to the on-going and lively debate about the definition of the notion of Sustainable Plus Energy Neighbourhood (SPEN), which highlights the multiple dimensions when talking about sustainability in districts moving beyond the traditional and strict building energy assessment. Based on a holistic methodology which ensures the consideration of the multidimensional nature and goals of SPEN, the paper outlines an evaluation framework. The evaluation framework defines the key performance indicators distributed in five categories that consider energy and power performance, GHG emissions, indoor environmental quality, smartness, flexibility, life cycle costs and social sustainability. This framework is designed to be implemented during integrated design processes aiming to select design options for a neighbourhood as well within during the operational phase for monitoring its performance. Further work will include the implementation and validation of the framework in four real-life positive energy neighbourhoods in different climate zones of Europe as part of syn.ikia H2020 project.

Mainstreaming energy communities has been one of the main challenges in the low-carbon transition of cities. In this sense, urban building energy modelling (UBEM) has an untapped role in enabling energy communities, as simulations on urban models provide evidence-based decision support to reduce risks, engage, motivate and guide actors, assert wider policy goals and regulatory requirements. This accelerating role and the potential of UBEM is not sufficiently understood, as research into energy community focuses on its barriers and impacts, while the research of UBEM is mainly technologically oriented. This review takes a sociotechnical approach to explore whether UBEM is a technological trigger for energy communities, furthering the conceptual framework of transition management. factors influencing energy community progression in different use-cases and stages of their lifecycle are compiled to assess the affordances of distinct capabilities of prevalent UBEM tools. The study provides a guide for energy community planners to UBEM. It matches different tool capabilities to the various stages of the project lifecycle for the different use-cases, equipping them with the means to accelerate the low-carbon transition of cities from the bottom-up. Finally, the study defines a development trajectory oriented towards application in urban sustainability to a rather new UBEM field.

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