Consortium

The Department of Planning, at Aalborg University, has more than 40 years of experience in the Danish energy planning process, where strategies for the development of energy conservation, renewable energy sources and combined heat and power (CHP) have been put forward from the very start. The department has regularly been involved in the design of Danish energy policy and implementation at both local and national levels, and has been expanding that knowledge and experience to other European countries and global scenarios.

The Sustainable Energy Planning (SEP) Research group, part of the Department of Planning, will coordinate the project sEEnergies, where it will also lead research based on its expertise in three main areas of study: 1) Technical Energy System Analysis. 2) Feasibility studies 3) Public regulation viewed in the light of technological change. The SEP Research Group has experience in carrying out research on the integration of renewable energy, energy scenarios for different national and international regions, and renewable energy solutions for transport. It has initiated, in the Heat Roadmap Europe studies, many activities relating socio-economic research and modelling of energy efficiency/savings, mainly in buildings, but also in the industry and transport sectors. The group works with an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable energy planning combining techno-economic, geographical and socio-political aspects. The group has some key strengths in the modelling of Smart Energy Systems (i.e. the large-scale integration of intermittent renewables) by developing and using the EnergyPlan modelling tool.

Halmstad University is a higher education institution located in the city of Halmstad on the west coast of southern Sweden. The university was founded in 1983 and is characterised by innovation-driven research in the areas of information and communication technology, health and lifestyle, and sustainable development. At the School of Business, Engineering and Science, one of four schools at the university, the Halmstad University District Heating and Cooling Research Group has been active since 2009. The group is led by Professor Emeritus Dr. Sven Werner, an internationally renowned and recognised expert in the field of district heating and cooling, and consists today of five researchers dedicated to different topics within the field. These topics include for example low-temperature heat distribution technologies, geographical information system analyses of assets and demands, business models and economy of heat distribution, exergy and energy systems analyses, as well as the general study of district heating and cooling deployment in Europe and the rest of the World.

During only the last ten years, the Group has participated in several national and international (European) research projects focusing on energy system efficiency, heating and cooling markets, and heat and cold distribution technologies. In the sEEnergies project, Halmstad University is work package leader of WP5 (Spatial analyses of energy efficiency potentials and development of GIS visualisation platform) and will work on building geodatabases, performing spatial analytics in geographical information systems, and collaborate with other work packages to establish the potentials for the energy efficiency first principle in Europe. Halmstad University will also contribute to project dissemination and publication of findings.

TEP Energy was founded in 2008 by researchers of the Centre for Energy Policy and Economics (CEPE) of ETH Zurich and of the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) in Karlsruhe as an independent company based in Zurich, Switzerland. TEP Energy provides expertise in energy system modelling with a focus on energy demand and a special focus on modelling prospective energy demand per scenario, preparing hourly electricity and heat load curves and devising experience- and cost curves for selected technologies.

TEP Energy will perform as WP leader the energy demand forecasts and energy-efficiency cost curves in WP1, focusing on the building sector, using the bottom-up model FORECAST. In FORECAST, the building sector is differentiated between residential- and non-residential buildings (tertiary sector), represented by a techno-economic description of both heating and cooling technologies as well as energy efficiency investment options and operational measures. Particularly due to this techno-economic description, the FORECAST model is well suited to deliver the tasks described in the WP description.

• The first objective for WP1 is to shed light on the cost aspects of different refurbishment measures and their contribution to reduce energy demand as well as comparing such measures to the costs of using renewable energies for building related energy services.
• The second objective consists of collecting and developing the data from the EU28 countries on EE potentials in the building sector, which are required for an overall assessment of the EE potentials in integrated energy systems (WP6) as well as for spatial analysis in WP5.
• A third objective of this work package is to develop a broad understanding of the economic, social and ecological impacts of implementing EEFP in the buildings sector.

Established in 1636, Utrecht University has evolved into a leading modern research university,  with nearly 30,000 students and 8,500 employees divided over 7 faculties. The Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development is part of the Geosciences faculty at Utrecht University and is divided into four research groups; Innovation studies, Energy & Resources, Environmental Sciences and Environmental Governance. The activities in this project are conducted by the Energy & Resources (E&R) group which consists of about 50 employees. We conduct disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research and provide education on energy science and technology for sustainable development. Research activities include: energy system analysis, energy and material efficiency in industries and buildings, PV and wind energy, biomass energy, carbon capture and storage and risk assessment. E&R has a strong and diverse funding position; a large share of the research is funded by external sources, divided between scientific funds (NWO; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), national sources (Energy Agency, Ministries, private sector) and international sources (EC, IEA, FAO, UN, private sector, etc.).

Within the project UU is leader of Work Package 3, which aims to determine industrial energy efficiency potentials up to 2050 in EU28. As WP Leader, UU is also responsible for linking WP3 to other work packages in the project such as the energy system modelling. UU has an extensive knowledge base on industrial energy use and efficiency. This knowledge has been essential in the development of various internationally used industrial modules and models, and analytical tools for corporate and policy decision makers.

The department of Energy and Environmental Management at Europa-Universität Flensburg has been pursuing interdisciplinary research and hosted education programmes in the field of sustainable energy systems management since 1989. It is part of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, established by the two universities located in Flensburg to combine all relevant disciplines in the field of energy systems transition. Strong expertise in the field of geospatial mapping of sustainable energy systems has been developed for the past 20 years, and since 2012, staff has actively participated in the development of Peta, the Pan-European Thermal Atlas, which is the first geographical quantification of potentials and costs of district energy across Europe, at 100m grid resolution. Accordingly, in the sEEnergies project, EUF is contributing to the mapping and the quantification of energy efficiency potentials by location as well as to a better understanding of the local geographies of efficient energy systems.

KU Leuven conducts fundamental and applied research in all academic disciplines with a clear international orientation. The participation of KU Leuven in numerous highly competitive national and European projects  reflects the three pillars of KU Leuven: research, education and service to society. KU Leuven is also co-founder of the Flemish research consortium ‘’EnergyVille” in which also the Building Physics Section participates (http://www.energyville.be). As a top research center, it aims for a market-based, sustainable energy system for large urban areas. 

The active participation of KU Leuven within the sEEnergies project will be performed by the Building Physics Section, which is part of the Civil Engineering Department of the KU Leuven. Since its start in 1978, the Building Physics Section has been involved in research and educational activities in the field of heat, air and mass transfer in building materials, building components, whole buildings and the built environment. The global objective of the Building Physics Section can be formulated as: performing high level research to realize comfortable, durable and energy efficient buildings by a better and integrated knowledge of the underlying physical phenomena. In this research area, the Building Physics Section has built up a strong experimental and numerical expertise. 

In this project the openIDEAS software tool is of importance. This tool has been developed at KU Leuven in the Modelica simulation environment. It consists of an open framework for integrated building and district energy simulations allowing simultaneous transient simulation of thermal and electrical systems at both building and feeder level. The tool is internationally renowned and is used in different national and international projects. The tools is under constant development and is used and maintained by numerous PhD students and post-doctoral researchers. 

The Norwegian University of Life Sciences is a public university located in Ås, Norway, and has around 5200 students. Established in 1859 as the Norwegian Agricultural Postgraduate College, it became a scientific university college in 1897 and obtained full university status in 2005. NMBU’s  research and study programs am to enable people all over the world to tackle the big, global challenges regarding the environment, sustainable development, how to improve human and animal health, renewable energy sources, food production, and land- and resource management.

At NMBU, the project is rooted in the Urban Sustainability research group (headed by prof. Næss) and is affiliated in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. This department is Norway’s leading research and education environment within spatial planning.

The Urban Sustainability research group is the leading Norwegian research environment on urban sustainability.  The group is making a significant international impact theoretically and through empirical studies, evident from, among others, a strong publication record of its key members. Its research scope covers environmental, social as well as economic aspects of sustainable development and its implications for urban and regional planning. The group has a particularly strong expertise in studies on relationships between urban structures and travel.

SYNYO is a global-acting enterprise focusing on research, innovation and technology located in 3 offices in Vienna, Austria. SYNYO explores, develops and implements novel methods, approaches, technologies and solutions in various domains tackling societal, political, ecological and economical challenges. SYNYO analyses the impact of emerging technologies from different angles and from an interdisciplinary perspectives. The team at SYNYO consists of high-skilled employees specialized in various scientific and technical fields like Social Sciences, Safety & Security, Energy & Sustainability, Urban Future, Smart Health, or Digital Systems, Smart Technologies. The team of SYNYO consists of 28 employees working on national and international projects.

SYNYO is well connected within the scientific community and will provide own research and innovation network platforms in near future. 2015 and 2016 SYNYO was among the Top 3 most successful research-oriented SMEs in Austria (H2020 Performance Monitor by FFG).

The Fraunhofer ISI is part of the Fraunhofer Society for Applied Research in Germany, a non-profit corporation, which promotes applied research and assures the link between fundamental and industrial research. The Fraunhofer Society is mostly financed through contract work for public bodies at European, national and regional level as well as for industrial companies. The research society has around 60 research institutes all over Germany. The Fraunhofer ISI complements the scientific and technological spectrum of the Fraunhofer Institutes through interdisciplinary research on the interdependence between technology, economy and society.