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.

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In this paper, we provide a view of the ongoing PEDRERA project, whose main scope is to design a district simulation model able to set and analyze a reliable prediction of potential business scenarios on large scale retrofitting actions, and to evaluate the overall co-benefits resulting from the renovation process of a cluster of buildings. According to this purpose and to a Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) approach, the model combines systemized data—at both building and district scale—from multiple sources and domains. A sensitive analysis of 200 scenarios provided a quick perception on how results will change once inputs are defined, and how attended results will answer to stakeholders’ requirements. In order to enable a clever input analysis and to appraise wide-ranging ranks of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) suited to each stakeholder and design phase targets, the model is currently under the implementation in the urbanZEB tool’s web platform.

The ISO 52000–1:2017 is the overarching Energy Performance of Buildings (EPB) standard, providing the general framework of the EPB assessment. It is applicable to the assessment of overall energy use of a building, by measurement or calculation, and the calculation of energy performance in terms of primary energy or other energy-related metrics. ISO 52000–1 provides general profound guidelines, but also gives the freedom to adapt the guidelines with national standards and regulations. This article focuses on design stage energy performance assessment in the framework of syn.ikia project, which aims to deliver a blueprint for an Integrated Design Process of sustainable plus energy buildings and neighbourhoods, leading the way to plus energy districts and cities. This project has four demonstration sites and the one being in focus of this article is located in Catalonia, Spain. Even though this project and Spanish Technical code both are based on ISO 52000–1, the criteria of calculation boundaries of those two vary in some degree, and that can cause great difference in the primary energy balance. In the calculation of the energy balance the criteria of syn.ikia considers all common energy uses in a building, including heating, cooling, ventilation, dehumidification, domestic hot water and lighting, while the Spanish Technical Code excludes lighting consumption. The main difference however is caused due to the fact that in syn.ikia hypothesis the exported energy is being considered in the calculation of how much non-renewable energy is avoided from the grid, while Spanish Technical Code excludes it. For the evaluation of these differences, a simplified monthly primary energy calculation tool is developed during the evaluation framework of key performance indicators of the project. The analysis of the calculation framework hypothesis is presented, analyzing the effects of the assessment boundaries, different primary energy balance calculation hypothesis and building design alternatives.

One contributor’s name was missing in the original version of the authorship of the paper [...]