University campuses, residential neighbourhoods and other urban areas have different needs for energy solutions. The formulation and comparison of these solutions demands welldefined concepts and robust decision support tools. This paper proposes the following definition: "Energy positive neighbourhoods are those in which the annual energy demand is lower than annual energy supply from local renewable energy sources. Short-term imbalances … are corrected with national energy supplies. The aim is to provide a functional, healthy, user friendly environment with as low energy demand and little environmental impact as possible." Key performance indicators are proposed along with an 'energy positivity label'. A decision support tool for the long term planning of neighbourhood energy solutions is described which is currently being used to evaluate a university campus in France and a residential neighbourhood in Finland. The research presented extends the limits of current approaches to energy analyses from individual buildings to neighbourhood level.
KEYWORDSEnergy positive neighbourhood, key performance indicators, energy positivity label, urban planning decision support tool, university campus, residential neighbourhood.
The aim of this paper is to assess opportunities the Clean Energy Package provides for Plus Energy Buildings (PEBs) and Plus Energy Districts (PEDs) regarding their economic optimization and market integration, possibly leading to new use cases and revenue streams. At the same time, insights into regulatory limitations at the national level in transposing the set of EU Clean Energy Package provisions are shown. The paper illustrates that the concepts of PEBs and PEDs are in principle compatible with the EU energy community concepts, as they relate to technical characteristics while energy communities provide a legal and regulatory framework for the organization and governance of a community, at the same time providing new regulatory space for specific activities and market integration. To realize new use cases, innovative ICT approaches are needed for a range of actors actively involved in creating and operating energy communities as presented in the paper. The paper discusses a range of different options to realize PEBs and PEDs as energy communities based on the H2020 EXCESS project. It concludes, however, that currently the transposition of the Clean Energy Package by the EU Member States is incomplete and limiting and as a consequence, in the short term, the full potential of PEBs and PEDs cannot be exploited.
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