Newsletter [April 2023]

Annex 83 Workshop  | Palermo | 12-14 April 2023

Annex 83 organised its 6th working meeting, this time in Palermo. This is the second face-to-face along with online (hybrid) event arranged for the working meeting. Happy to have experts, PED enthusiast and various PED projects under one platform. All participants were excited to discuss and share the ongoing development, future plans with the Positive Energy Districts in Annex83.

• Subtask B had the opportunity to discuss how data for modelling PEDs or districts, or energy communities can be organized and used for various modelling software.
• Subtask C members have been involved in an interactive workshop managed by Eurac and Politecnico di Torino to discuss and identify the expected multiple benefits related to PED implementation. Then, shortlisted benefits have been individually ranked by participants by using the best/worst scaling method. Also, the framework analyses for the three sustainability pillars were presented, with a particular focus on the social aspects.
• It was a great opportunity to discuss synergies and potential collaborations, also among subtasks (B&C, A&B). 
• STB and STC will collaborate for the identification and quantitative formulation of indicators.

Booklet of the meeting and agenda: https://annex83.iea-ebc.org/event?EventID=8343 .

 

Summer School Registration

Subtask D

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Subtask B Workshop | Palermo | 11 April 2023

The 1st part of the workshop consisted of several presentations from the attendees. Then, 1-2 cases studies and data were presented and followed with a discussion on how those cases can be adapted to their tools (how data can be organized, what adaptations need to be made to use it in their software, etc.). The results are presented at the Annex 83 working meeting in the next days (12th and 13th of April).

   

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Newsletter [March 2023]

Our submissions to CISBAT Conference

Several articles and posters were submitted by the Subtask for participation in CISBAT. If possible, one (or two) sessions dedicated to Annex83 will be organised.

Annex 83 on BT-Seminar Research Sparkles✨ from the World

Annex 83 and its organisation was presented by Hassam ur Rehman (VTT) and Rakesh Ramesh (VTT) in the seminar titled “BT-Seminar Research Sparkles✨ from the World – Tuesday 28th of March” at Department of Civil and environmental Engineering and Zero Emission Neighborhoods, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim Norway. During the same event, the summer school was presented. Around twenty people attended the meeting.

More information: https://annex83.iea-ebc.org/event?EventID=8343 

For the next meeting in Palermo we are having a dedicated session for our PhD students to discuss their work. This is a great opportunity for triggering new ideas, mutually exchanging research advancements and expanding your own network. The PhD talks session will take place on April 13th and each presentation will last about 10-15 minutes. 

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Next PhD Summer School | Catania | 12-16 June 2023

The second IEA EBC Annex 83 Ph.D. Summer School will be held in Catania from 12th to 16th June, 2023. This year, the School will focus on "Principles of energy system modelling for Positive Energy Districts".

More information: DOCUMENT. 

Registration form: LINK. Please complete registration by 30.04.2023.

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Newsletter [February 2023]

Subtask A

Subtask C

On 1st February 2023 the project PROPEL on positive energy districts has been kicked off. Within this project, EURAC research will test the application of a multiple benefits approach to integrated sustainability of PEDs, according to STC findings. PROPEL is a 36 months project coordinated by RISE and co-financed by the JPI urban Europe.

The syllabus of the Annex 83 Summer School will be circulated in the next upcoming week.

Subtask D

On 2. Feb. 2023 a workshop on PEDS, POSITIVE ENERGY DISTRICTS essential components for “Net Zero” Cities took place with Austrian stakeholders. Attendees from industry and research discussed about this topic. After an overview about Annex83 by Shokufeh Zamini (AIT, Austria, STD), Christoph Gollner (FFG, Austria), Ali Hainun (AIT, Austria), Carsten Wemhöner (OST, Switzerland), Fabian Ochs und Georgios Dermentzis (UIBK, Austria, STD), Andreas Türk (Joanneum Research, Austria, STC), presented PEDs from different points of view. The presentations are published in https://drc.ait.ac.at/sites/annex83austria/activities/#:~:text=stakeholders-workshop

Sustainable Built Environment event organized by Architectural Institute of Japan

Registration form: LINK . Please complete registration by 10.03.2023.

More information: https://annex83.iea-ebc.org/event?EventID=8343 

For the next meeting in Palermo we are having a dedicated session for our PhD students to discuss their work. This is a great opportunity for triggering new ideas, mutually exchanging research advancements and expanding your own network. The PhD talks session will take place on April 13th and each presentation will last about 10-15 minutes. 

If you wish to participate as speaker please send me by March 15th the following information:

• your presentation title
• your personal details (name/surname, institution, PhD supervisor)
• a short abstract (200 words max).

Looking forward to the next PhD talks!

Next PhD Summer School | Catania | 12-16 June 2023

The second IEA EBC Annex 83 Ph.D. Summer School will be held in Catania from 12th to 16th June, 2023. This year, the School will focus on "Principles of energy system modelling for Positive Energy Districts".

Registration form: LINK. Please complete registration by 30.04.2023.

New publication

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Newsletter [January 2023]

Subtask B
STB is interviewing case studies (outside the H2020 program) to analyse which technologies (smart technologies, control, energy efficiency and supply) and citizen engagement strategies are being applied in different context. Do you have an interesting case? Please, contact andgab@cartif.es to be part of our analyses!

Subtask C
The Framework Activities are on-going and it is planned to have a meeting with the environmental, economic and social groups in the next upcoming weeks. 
STC and STA are collaborating on the topic of stakeholders' engagement and impact assessment.
A recent meeting between Annex 83 members and external experts set the next steps for a joint research paper on decarbonization policies.

Subtask D
Austrian annex83 is going to have a digital stakeholder workshop on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, 13:00-15:00, where PEDS, POSITIVE ENERGY DISTRICTS Essential Components for "Net Zero" City will be discussed. The event addresses the question of what contributions the international network to Positive Energy Districts IEA Annex83 makes to the goal "Net Zero by 2050" and how these activities can be networked with Austrian initiatives https://drc.ait.ac.at/sites/annex83austria/activities/#:~:text=Stakeholders%2DWorkshop .

The PED Guidelines Workshop organized by STD took place on Thursday, 26th of January 2023; 11:00 - 12:00 (CET) with 24 attendees. Experts discussed the findings of the analyses of guidelines after the presentation of Daniele Vettorato, Eurac, Urban planning and technical guidelines, best practices for PED. Moreover the feedbacks from audience were collected about Relevant aspects for URBAN PLANNERS and CITY OFFICERS to be included in the Positive Energy Districts guidelines in an interactive working board.

CISBAT2023 conference will be held in Lausanne, Switzerland. https://cisbat.epfl.ch/ Annex83 is planning a workshop on PEDs and a session on PED. So far, 10 abstracts were submitted (deadline was 24.January) to the Scientific Committee (from collaborators from all STs in Annex83).

STD (DV) participated in the PED Pilot Call Final Meeting / PED Call II Kick-off Meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark 30.-31.January. JPI Urban Europe invited projects from PED Pilot Call (2020) and PED Call II (2021) to participate in the combined JPI Urban Europe PED Projects Meeting on 30/31 Jan in Copenhagen, hosted by Innofund Denmark.

Ph.D. Summer School
Ph.D. Summer School will be held in Catania from 12th to 16th June, 2023.

New publication
Tony Castillo-Calzadilla, Roberto Garay-Martinez and Cristina Martin Andonegui. Holistic fuzzy logic methodology to assess positive energy district (PathPED). (2022) Sustainable Cities and Society Volume 89, February 2023, 104375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.104375 .

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We are very happy to wish you our best season's greetings!

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Newsletter [December 2022]

Subtask D
STD has notified all Annex 83 collaborators the participation of the bi-annual CISBAT conference in Lausanne (13.-15.Sep 2023), specifying the deadline (15th January of 2023) for the abstract submission, urging them to participate, as it is intended to organize a dedicated session on PED.

It was decided that the 6th Annex 83 working meeting will be held 12. - 14. April 2023 in Palermo (Italy) (please register asap).

STD has organized that the Workshop about the Analysis of the PED Guidelines will take place the next 26th of January of 2023 11:00-12:00 CET. An invitation to participate was sent.

STD-leaders (Shokufeh, Sergio and Matthias) participated in the first DB editor meeting on 22.Nov 2022 (online) in cooperation with CA PED-EU-NET. DB Input Form and other issues around the data handling was discussed. If you are interested in putting your PED into the DB, please contact STD-leaders for further assistance.

Next Annex83 Working Meeting
The next IEA EBC Annex 83 Ph.D. Summer School will be held in Catania from 12th to 16th June, 2023.

New publication
Federica Leone, Francesco Reda, Ala Hasan, Hassam ur Rehman, Fausto Carmelo Nigrelli, Francesco Nocera and Vincenzo Costanzo. Lessons Learned from Positive Energy District (PED) Projects: Cataloguing and Analysing Technology Solutions in Different Geographical Areas in Europe. (2022) Energies 16(1), 356; DOI: 10.3390/en16010356. https://doi.org/10.3390/en16010356

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Newsletter [November 2022]

Subtask C
STC is collaborating with WG3 "PED Laboratories, Monitoring and Replication" of the COST-ACTION.

The next internal meeting will be arranged during the first week of December. It is planned to check the progress of the framework activities and discuss the upcoming activity "Learning from case studies".

Ph.D. Summer School 2023
The next IEA EBC Annex 83 Ph.D. Summer School will be held in Catania from 12th to 16th June, 2023.

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Newsletter [October 2022]

Subtask A
Subtask A leaders has had a planning meeting to plan for upcoming work till end of the year and to prepare for the April 2023 mtg. The work will primarily focus on further developing the papers presented at the SSPCR conference. Dedicated paper development meetings will be organized with co-authors.

Subtask C
Subtask C had two kick-off meetings regarding the status of the environmental and social framework activities.

An internal meeting with all STC members is going to be planned for the next upcoming weeks to check Journal papers progress and set ideas for activities CX.3.

Subtask D
In the framework of IEA-Networking activity, Shokufeh Zamini (AIT) presented ANNEX83 in an elevator pitch on an Austrian event on 27th Sept. More information is available here: https://nachhaltigwirtschaften.at/de/iea/veranstaltungen/2022/20220927-iea-vernetzungstreffen.php. Video: https://youtu.be/WEvGbw7L7uQ (German with English subtitles).

Subtask D had another meeting with COST Action PED-EU-NET on 14th Sept, on PED database state-of-the-art and plans in regards to database editors.

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Newsletter [September 2022]

5th Annex 83 working meeting (Finland)

On 14th and 15th of September another working meeting took place. The meeting was organised in hybrid mode, with some attending online and some in person in Helsinki. 

 

Subtask C
STC completed a State-Of-The-Art report as a first and preliminary output of the activities CX.1 regarding the economic, environmental and social literature review and sustainability assessment. It will be sent to internal Reviewers during the next up-coming weeks. Two journal papers deepening CX.1 activities are going to be submitted before December 2022.

The framework analyses of activities CX.2 have been intensively discussed during the last parallel session in Finland. Each writing team is going to consolidate the work done so far. The deadline for these activities has been set for February 2023.

The STC group is also working on the definition of must-have and characteristics of PEDs, to be implemented during the application of the frameworks developed in CX.3. To this scope, STC will get in touch with STD for PED case studies and with projects and initiatives joining the Annex 83.

The joint activities with STA continue and are mainly devoted to the definition of quality of life indicators for PEDs.

Subtask D
The PED Database is still undergoing some final adjustments, that were addressed during the last progress meeting with COST Action PED-EU-NET the 23^rd of September. Another progress report is planned in October to release the final version.

The STD has collected up to 42 PED guidelines so far and the scope of the analysis, as well as the focus of the final outcome of this task were intensively discussed during the parallel session in the Annex83 meeting.

During this last working meeting STD reported on status of the activities recorded on our social media platforms (website, LinkedIn, Twitter). Main outcomes from this analysis for the period 1/04/2022 – 26/09/2022 are:

• Channels: Website and LinkedIn are more preferable channels of communication than Twitter.
• Popularity: Website reached almost 1000 visitors, LinkedIn has 250 followers.
• Tendency: LinkedIn profile catches the most attention during the working meetings and conferences whilst website has more stable pattern of visitors throughout the year.
• Geography: Main percentage of the visitors of our social platforms are located in Italy, Netherlands, Finland, Austria, Spain, USA, Canada and Sweden.
• As a result, we encourage everyone to use our social media platforms to obtain information, share experience and promote subtask activities.

Summer School for PhD in 2023

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Plenary meeting in Finland | registration
We would like to remind people that will join Annex83 Plenary meeting by person (face to face) à to register for the meeting via the link as the plenary meeting is approaching, and there is a fee to pay for catering and social dinner etc. (registration form and payment link): ANNEX 83 - Contact Details (eventsair.com). FILL IT IN BY THE 5th of September! ONLY those that will join in person have to register via this link!

For more information regarding the meeting visit: https://annex83.iea-ebc.org/event?EventID=8087 .

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Newsletter [August 2022]

Subtask A
A new research project (‘PED-ACT’) is funded through the JPI Urban Europe framework. This project will contribute to standardisation of the database of existing PEDs (planned, designed or implemented) with a focus on Sweden, Turkey and Austria. PED-ACT will further learn the PED characteristics from the database and creates digital PED references by mapping stakeholders’ needs and priorities in cities of Borlänge (Sweden), Umeå (Sweden), Ankara (Turkey), Karsiyaka (Turkey) and the county of Lower Austria (Austria). PED-ACT pursues bilateral learning and co-design strategies among different cities for wide replication of PEDs towards ‘climate-neutrality and smart cities’ goals. This project covers the main work from Subtask A, and contribute to other subtasks and Cost Action CA19126 as well.

Subtask C
The State Of The Art Report will go through a final check for format and citations' corrections and will to be sent for internal review in the next upcoming weeks.

The framework activities are on-going and updates are going to be discussed during the plenary meeting in September.

The extended version of the paper presented at the SEB21 Conference is going to be prepared and an initial draft is expected by the end of October.

Upcoming Event
Annex 83 working meeting is scheduled for 14-16 September 2022 in Finland. 

New Special Issues - Design and Applications of Positive Energy Districts
There is a new special issue on Positive Energy Districts : https://www.mdpi.com/journal/designs/special_issues/4351A1FDU0 . 

For more information on current Special Issues visit: https://annex83.iea-ebc.org/special-issues .

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Newsletter [July 2022]

Subtask B

The Annex 83 Summer school on “Positive Energy Districts: Towards a holistic approach to modeling and performance assessment” was held in Canada in the first week of July. The school tackled issues such as plus energy design, urban energy modeling, energy systems modeling, energy flexbility, environmental analyses, data-driven modelling, business models and experiences from key projects such as Syn.ikia, MAKING-CITY, or ATELIER were presented. More than 30 students from different countries around the world participated and work on energy modelling of different case studies (MONTREAL: DOMPARK, AMSTERDAM: REPUBLICA, BARCELONA: Santa Coloma de Gramenet). The students will continue working on the case studies assessing different topics (energy flexibility, building renovation, renewable energy integration, etc.) that are relevant for realising PEDs, and publishing different articles about it.

Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions Conference

Between 19th and 22nd of July we attended the SSPCR conference in Bolzano. First day of the conference was dedicated to PEDs where we held a session on 'Sharing the experiences on Positive Energy Districts: Lessons learned from Annex 83'. At our workshop there were four discussion groups, each for each subtask. The participants were asked to discuss on these questions:

STA

• What are the essential PED DNAs? Can we create generic PED archetypes based on them?
• What are the categories of quality of life indicators relevant for PED development?
• How would you use a database tool to learn about PED development process (ie. using static information for dynamic decision-making)?

STB

• Which future technologies do you think/expect will be included in PEDs and cities?
• What can be the challenges/barriers of PEDs in the future (regarding control, smart solutions, modelling, technolgoies...)?
• What is your expectation for modeling and how models can help to shape cities/PEDs?

STC

• What is the impact of stakeholders in the PED desing/decision process, what are their "interests" and how are stakeholders likely to be involved in the overall process?
• What costs do you expect to bear and what revenues do you expect to realize from the PED implementation and, in relation to these, which aspects should be included in the organizational/business models?
• What would you prioritize in terms of energetic aspects or efficiency and social implications of living in a PED? Which aspects are more relevant for you?

STD

• STD-CA-JPI are developing a database of PEDs and PED-Labs and it is expected to be partially open for the different stakeholders: What would be your main interest on consulting the Database?
• In the first phase of the project 25 guidelines were analysed and further guidelines are going to be analyzed. From your point of view, what information would be the most interesting to see (e.g. Inception, Design, Monitoring, implementation, technical aspects, PEDs Phase, ..)?
• In your opinion who can have benefits from the PEDs studies and Annex 83 results? Which stakeholders are interested?

Subtask A and B held a session on "Planning and Implementing Positive Energy Districts from Concept to Practice: Mapping of Characteristics, Technologies, Stakeholders, Methods and Processes" and subtask C on "Towards a sustainability assessment of Positive Energy Districts: methodologies, case studies and applications".

We will share the outcomes of the workshop in the near future. 

Upcoming event

Annex 83 working meeting is scheduled for 14-16 September 2022 in Finland (if circumstances allow).

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Summer School for PhD 

The first summer school for PhD students of IEA EBC Annex 83 just concluded in Montreal, Concordia University. The school approached the topic of PEDs in a holistic way, including modelling, energy simulation, design, optimization and sustainability. With more than forty students the school was a success and we look forward to the next edition.

Thanks to Francesco Guarino and Ursula Eicker for organizing the event, to the Concordia team for hosting it, to all lecturers and all students who participated.

Look out for next year edition!

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Newsletter [June 2022]

Subtask A

Preparations are underway for the 3 papers led by STA to be presented at SSPCR 2022.

For the paper "Do you want to live in a PED? A review of Quality-of-Life indicators from existing PED projects", a meeting was held on 10 Jun 2022 to discuss the respective contributions to the paper. Another meeting will be held on 13 July 2022 to be prepared for the conference. As Caroline is not able to attend the SSPCR conference, the second author Han Vandevyvere will present on her behalf.

Subtask C

The revision of the State of the art report is ongoing and all participants and writing teams will go through final corrections. 

A joint paper with STA on quality-of-life indicators and relevant PED-projects for review has been discussed and planned.

Presentation on 27th May, by Tiziana Binda at the conference “New Metropolitan Perspectives 2022” in Reggio Calabria (Italy) of the paper entitled “Evaluating Positive Energy Districts: A Literature Review” (Tiziana Binda, Marta Bottero, and Adriano Bisello) http://www.nmp.unirc.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/NMP2022-Programme.pdf

Subtask D

Annex 83 STD participated in the Positive Energy Districts conference in Amsterdam 23.-24.6.2022. The conference consisted of keynote speech, PEDs development analysis, site visits, workshops supported by inspiring social events. It provided a good platform for exchange of ideas, dissemination of concepts and future plans for PEDs.

Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions (SSPCR) Conference [19-22.07 Bolzano]

Special sessions and special event supported by Annex 83 are organised at the international conference SSPCR. All subtasks have already prepared main topics they will be discussing during the world cade session. For more details about the topics discussed on PED day as well as the entire programme of the conference visit https://www.sspcr.eurac.edu/conference-programme/. 

Registration to the conference is still open https://www.sspcr.eurac.edu/take-part/registration-fees/.

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Newsletter [May 2022]

Subtask C
Presentation on 27th  May, by Tiziana Binda at the conference “ New Metropolitan Perspectives 2022” in Reggio Calabria (Italy) of the paper entitled “Evaluating Positive Energy Districts: A Literature Review” (Tiziana Binda, Marta Bottero, and Adriano Bisello) http://www.nmp.unirc.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/NMP2022-Programme.pdf

Subtask D
STD is still in the process of collecting PED-related guidelines. All contribution is strongly welcomed. Link to the form: https://forms.office.com/r/fVDV2N0GLD. Please share it with your network on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/iea-ebc-annex-83-positive-energy-districts_microsoft-forms-activity-6926152702640934913--9si?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Annex83_IEA/status/1521492735403958272

SSPCR
All subtasks are preparing for the SSPCR international conference happening in Bolzano in July. The first day of the conference, 19th of July, will be dedicated to PEDs related topics. To see a full programme of the conference visit this link: https://www.sspcr.eurac.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/SSPCR2022-Draft-Programme-220525.pdf. 

Special Issues section

There is a new section on our website - “Special Issues”. Here you will find updated list of all Special Issues Annex 83 is currently following. Visit: https://annex83.iea-ebc.org/special-issues .

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4th Annex 83 working meeting

On 28th and 29th of April another working meeting took place online. Each subtask was working on defining topics and discussing doings for Annex 83 World Cafe event happening in July in Bolzano. Additionally, this was a to do list for each of the subtask:

• Subtask A: Outline how to proceed with the finalization of the Draft framework of KPIs activity, PED scoping definition and the PED archetypes definition;
• Subtask B: Develop timings and discuss a workplan to close activities B1.1, B1.2, B.21, finalize and plan the inter-subtask workshop; 
• Subtask C: Develop and finalize a plan for the framework activities, literature review activities finalization; 
• Subtask D: Outline how to proceed with collaboration with COST action PED-EU-NET/ JPI Urban Europe and with the inclusion of non-EU PED experiences, finalization and diffusion of the database and development of further dissemination activities, further development of the PED guidelines. As part of it, STD organised an expert meeting with focus on experiences with PEDs and PEDs Database (a collaboration with Cost Action PED-EU-NET). Participants took part in the working activity based on miro board, where they collected PED case studies examples and discussed the technologies. 

On Friday 29th, there were 4 external experts giving presentations in regards to PED in Asia: decarbonization policies and case-studies:

• Zero carbon cities in Japan: current strategies and future challenges by Fernando Ortiz Montoya - Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)  
• An Overview of Contemporary Japanese Decarbonization Policies by Emma Saraff - Eu-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation  
• Net-positive Energy Buildings – an NUS-SDE Case Study by Khee Poh Lam, - Director of the Centre for Liveable Cities Ltd., Singapore, 
• Low- and net-zero carbon city initiatives in China: energy transition, spatial planning, and the others by Bo Qin - Renmin University of China 

Next Annex 83 working meeting

The next Annex 83 meeting is planned for 14-16 September 2022. If COVID situation allows it will be held in person in Finland! Updates on that will be send out by email.

STA & STC

Subtask A and Subtask C had a meeting to explore the possibility of interlinked cooperation focused on the establishment of a common PED framework for future activities and sustainability assessments.

• https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/35145/smart-and-sustainable-planning-foreurope-and-beyond#overview
• https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings/special_issues/Energ_District_Conc_Pract
• https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies/special_issues/zero_positive_building_communities
• https://www.mdpi.com/journal/smartcities/special_issues/PED_smart_cities

Subtask D is in a process of collecting PED-related guidelines, in regards to conceptualization, design, implementation, evaluation, monitoring of Positive Energy Districts, Positive Energy Neighbourhoods, Near ZeroEnergy Districts, NearlyZeroEnergyBuilding, Zero Energy Building, Zero Energy Districts , Positive Energy Building, Smart Energy Cities, Climate Neutral Cities, Ecodistricts and in general related to Sustainable development of built environment. Link to the form: https://forms.office.com/r/fVDV2N0GLD

Share it with your network on LinkedIn and Twitter 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/iea-ebc-annex-83-positive-energy-districts_microsoft-forms-activity-6926152702640934913--9si?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Annex83_IEA/status/1521492735403958272

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Submit a paper to Special Issue

On 25 March, we invite you to submit a paper to our Special Issue “Advanced Energy Systems in Zero/Positive Energy Buildings, Communities and Districts”, which will be published in Energies. I kindly ask whether you still have an interest in submitting it.

As an invited paper, the editorial office will offer you an 1100 CHF discount voucher from the Article Processing Charge (APC) CHF 2200 if you could submit your paper before 30 March 2023. There are a limited number of discount vouchers available which will be given to the first papers that will be accepted. Please ask us for the discount voucher in the email or during submission of the article. Please also note that you need to be the corresponding author or the first author if you would like to use the discount.

For more information of the Special Issue:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies/special_issues/zero_positive_building_communities

If you wish to check the fit of your manuscript for this Issue prior to submission, you are welcome to send a tentative title and abstract to our Assistant Editor April Liu (april.liu@mdpi.com) and you will receive feedback shortly.

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Newsletter [March 2022]

Subtask A leads 2 to 3 papers to the SSPCR 2022 conference:

• Development of archetypes for positive energy districts: concept and key characteristics,
• An in-depth learning of positive energy districts (PED) for their characterization by word embedding methods.

Subtask B

• Plans and organises case studies for PED’s,
• Works on concept for urban data management to harmonize case studies,
• Access and documents energy system component catalogue.

Subtask A and Subtask C are organizing a special issue on ‘Buildings’ Journal: "Planning and Implementing Positive Energy Districts from Concept to Practice (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings/special_issues/Energ_District_Conc_Pract).
This Special Issue is in collaboration with the International Conference on "Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions - SSPCR 2022", and the session "Planning and Implementing Positive Energy Districts from Concept to Practice: Mapping of Characteristics, Technologies, Stakeholders, Methods and Processes" (https://www.sspcr.eurac.edu/session-planning-andimplementing-positive-energy-districts-from-concept-to-practice/).

Subtask C 
Alongside the SSPCR conference, a “PED day” as a pre-conference event is going to take place on 19th July. The joint workshop is organized by the ANNEX 83 and the SMARTBEEJS project https://smart-beejs.eu/.

Abstract submission for the session "Towards a sustainability assessment of Positive Energy Districts" is open until 8th, April, at the link https://www.sspcr.eurac.edu/session-towards-asustainability-assessment-of-positive-energy-districts/

Subtask D

The COST Action PED-EU-NET, IEA Annex 83 and JPI Urban Europe PED programme organized a joint workshop on PEDs-Database on 8th of March 2022. The goal was to introduce and discuss the structure of the upcoming collaborative PED Database. This database will be based on the collection of a variety of PED experiences by the researchers of the three initiatives. One of the main outputs of the workshop was the difficulty to find representatives of non-European PEDs. Annex83 took over the role of collecting non-European PEDs experiences and fill this gap.

New publication
Hassam ur Rehman; Ala Hasan; Francesco Reda. Challenges in reaching positive energy building level in apartment buildings in the Nordic climate: A techno-economic analysis. Energy & Buildings. (2022), 262, 111991, doi:10.1016/J.ENBUILD.2022.111991.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2022.111991

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Newsletter [February 2022]

Subtask C organises a Special Session for the SSPCR 2022 Conference

The session “Towards a sustainability assessment of Positive Energy Districts: methodologies, case studies and applications” aims at tackling the main aspects of sustainability assessment of Positive Energy Districts with a focus on case studies modelling and simulation. A workshop will be organized and hosted within SSPCR 2022 to share experiences and lessons learnt within the activities of the Annex 83 “Positive Energy Districts”.

The call for abstract is open until 14th of March.

The link to the session is: https://www.sspcr.eurac.edu/session-towards-a-sustainability-assessment-of-positive-energy-districts/

Subtask D organises a joint workshop on creation of PED database
The joint workshop with CA PED-EU-NET will focus on collecting information of PED experiences and create a PED database. The purpose of this workshop is to validate the list of input parameters and expose the format and structure of the PED database, as well as the procedures to internally operate in a coordinated way, calling for Annex83 collaborators to participate in the PED examples collection phase.

The workshop is going to take place online, on 8th of March at 9 am.

Austrian Annex83 Kick off 
The Austrian Annex83 under the lead of AIT had a kick off on 17th of February, with representatives from AIT, University of Innsbruck, Joanneum research and AEE - Institute for Sustainable Technologies. It focused on collaboration between subtasks specially between ST-C and ST-D.

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PhD Summer School

We are happy to announce that the PhD Summer school organized by the Annex 83 will take place in July (1st-8th) later this year and will be held at Concordia University in Montreal. 

To our students interested in participating: please check how to register here: Annex 83 Ph.D. Summer School. Please notice that registration is available until April 15th (or until the students registration limit is met).

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Newsletter [January 2022]

Subtask A and B will organise a joint Special Session for the SSPCR 2022 Conference
The session entitled 'Planning and Implementing Positive Energy Districts from Concept to Practice: Mapping of Characteristics, Technologies, Stakeholders, Methods and Processes' aims to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners working on the definition, planning and implementation of positive energy districts and climate neutral cities to share thoughts and exchange experiences.
The call for abstracts is open until 14 March 2022, further information can be found on the website: https://www.sspcr.eurac.edu/session-planning-and-implementingpositive- energy-districts-from-concept-to-practice/

Subtask A
The next ST-A Members Meeting will take place in February 2022, more information about the meeting date and agenda will be announced shortly.

Subtask C
Rosaria Volpe is a new co-leader of the Subtask C. 

Subtask D
Shokufeh Zamini (AIT) and Matthias Haase (ZHAW) will replace Hans-Martin (AIT) and Niki Gaitani (NTNU) in the co-lead of Subtask D in collaboration with Sergio Diaz de Garayo (CENER). Additionally, we want to recognise the role of Daniele Vettorato as PED Networking Ambassador. 

One upcoming workshop will share with the rest of Subtask leaders the results of the ON-LINE form that will be used to collect information of PED experiences and create a PED database.

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Newsletter [December 2021]

Subtask B
Is planning many activities for the upcoming year. First of all, a workshop on case studies will be held in March 2022 (jointly with other subtasks), in which the concept of different case studies, data availability and, (possibly) the energy system model and assumptions will be presented. The outcome of the workshop will be to develop a series of PED use cases that are representative enough for the Annex 83 and that will be modelled in the next months by Subtask B. In the 23rd of June an Annex 83 energy systems data and modelling course will be organised by Concordia University in Montreal, using the results of the workshops and subtask B colleagues and studies. Furthermore, a session for the Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions – SSPCR 2022 will be organised on the topic “Energy systems, Modeling and Control for Positive Energy Districts”.

Subtask C
is organizing a special session at the Smart and Sustainable Planning for cities and regions (SSPCR) conference in Bozen next July. The title of the session is "Towards a sustainability assessment of Positive Energy Districts: methodologies, case studies and applications". The topics of the session will include - among the others - Positive Energy Districts modelling and simulation aimed at decarbonization, analyses of good practices to achieve sustainability objectives, sustainability assessment frameworks and key performance indicators, sustainability assessment methodologies with a focus on environmental, economic and social impacts.

Subtask D
After completing the scoping phase of Subtask D1, the framework for data collection is being carried out in collaboration with the COST Action (CA19126 – Positive Energy Districts European Network) and JPI Urban Europe. The original template elaborated out of the specific requests of Subtasks A, B and C, has been merged with the COST Action and JPI Urban Europe data collection plans, and the resulting on-line form will be ready by mid-January of next year. The final version of this form will be presented to the Subtask A, B and C leaders to get their final approval and start the data collection phase.

New section on website
We created a new section on our website dedicated to multimedia https://annex83.ieaebc.org/videos. It is a place where we want to upload input from meetings and other events organised by subtasks. Therefore, we encourage you to share with us interesting content that may be of interest to other participants.

And as always, for further updates we invite you to regularly visit this page.

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Newsletter [November 2021]

Last Subtask C group meeting
The last Subtask C group meeting took place on the 15th of November. The framework definition for the economic, environmental and social perspective for Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) was kicked off, aiming at the definition of an interdisciplinary approach towards sustainability assessments of PEDs. - The writing of the "State of the art on sustainability assessment of PEDs report" is ongoing and will foresee further developments in the next few months. - Three different journal papers have been identified and will be prepared within Subtask C in the next few months."

Update from Subtask A
PhD student Reza Fachrizal, from Uppsala University in Sweden, gave a presentation about how to evaluate PED qualitatively. The title of the presentation was 'Self-consumptionsufficiency balance (SCSB): An index to quantify the grid independence of local energy systems'.

The next subtask A member meeting is planned in the end of January 2022.

New publication
Marotta I, Guarino F, Longo S, Cellura M. "Environmental Sustainability Approaches and Positive Energy Districts: A Literature Review". Sustainability. 2021; 13(23):13063. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132313063 (developed within Subtask C on environmental sustainability of Positive Energy Districts).

Call for PEDs/PEDs candidate cases
We are organizing the 'PED day' in the Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions- SSPCR 2022 (https://www.sspcr.eurac.edu/), therefore we call for the PED cases to participate in this joint sessions. Please submit your PED cases to investigate possible "PED/or PED candidates" cases for the SSPCR 2022 (https://www.sspcr.eurac.edu/) joint session. SEND YOUR CANDIDATE CASES to Ursula Eicker ursula.eicker@concordia.ca and Francesco Reda francesco.reda@vtt.fi .

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Newsletter [October 2021]

Online workshop “Positive energy districts performance assessment: methodologies, key performance indicators and future outlooks”
Subtask C and the EU SCC Monitoring & Evaluation task group co-organized the online workshop “Positive energy districts performance assessment: methodologies, key performance indicators and future outlooks” on the 22nd of October. The event aimed at sharing experience between the Annex and several other international PEDs initiatives on the topic of PED performance assessment. Around a hundred participants joined the vibrant discussion on current state and potential future development of PEDs.

Subtask B bi-monthly meeting was held on 28.10.2021

The meeting started by the following two presentations from other projects:
1. Integration of building flexibility into future energy systems (Academy of Finland project-FlexiB). Speakers Topi Rasku and Ala Hasan, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
2. MAKING-CITY PED technology tool for assisting cities on the PED decision making: Andrea Gabaldón and Beril Alpagut.

Team groups are created for preparing articles on design, flexibility and impact of PEDs.

There was discussion about preparation of Inter-Subtask Workshop on the preliminary results of activity B1: Mapping technical and system innovation solutions for PED.

New annex publications

1. Tuerk, A.; Frieden, D.; Neumann, C.; Latanis, K.; Tsitsanis, A.; Kousouris, S.; Llorente, J.; Heimonen, I.; Reda, F.; Ala-Juusela, M.; Allaerts, K.; Caerts, C.; Schwarzl, T.; Ulbrich, M.; Stosch, A.; Ramschak, T. “Integrating Plus Energy Buildings and Districts with the EU Energy Community Framework: Regulatory Opportunities, Barriers and Technological Solutions”. Buildings 2021, 11, 468. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings1110046
2. Rehman, H.u.; Diriken, J.; Hasan, A.; Verbeke, S.; Reda, F. “Energy and Emission Implications of Electric Vehicles Integration with Nearly and Net Zero Energy Buildings”. Energies 2021, 14, 6990. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14216990

New project
ARTEMIS “An integrated approach to improve the environmental performance of smart cities” is a two-year Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie research project led by Eurac Research that aims to understand how smart city strategies can effectively improve the environmental performance of urban systems. The project will develop a novel environmental impact assessment framework, integrating urban metabolism and life-cycle assessment, and will propose KPIs to evaluate environmental impacts of smart city projects and strategies. The project will be carried out by Joana Bastos and Daniele Vettorato in collaboration with Prof. Leonardo Rosado from Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden).
More information: https://www.eurac.edu/en/institutes-centers/institute-for-renewable-energy/projects/artemis and https://www.linkedin.com/company/artemis-h2020project/

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Newsletter [September 2021]

Biannual online Working Meeting
Annex 83 held its biannual online Working Meeting on 23 and 24 September. The meeting reviewed the status of progress in the four WPs of the Annex and plans for the next period. The programme also included a PED showcases session with four presentations from four countries and a PhD students session
with three students’ presentations.

You can find the meeting’s presentations in the Annex Teams under Meetings > 2021_09_WorkingMeeting and a record of the PhD session under PhD students meetings> PhD students presentations Sept 2021.

Note: The next Annex meeting is planned for 28 - 29 April 2022

Summer School 2022 
In the Annex meeting, ideas were discussed for arranging a Summer School for students in summer 2022. The summer school will be coordinated by Francesco Guarino francesco.guarino@unipa.it. Professors, teachers and students who are interested can contact Francesco Guarino for more information about the participation.

Workshop on Positive Energy Districts Performance Assessment
STA and STC are jointly organizing a Workshop on Positive Energy Districts Performance Assessment: Methodologies, Key Performance Indicators and Future Outlooks. The event will include presentations on the Annex work and discuss needs and potential of research on the workshop topics. The event will take place on the 22 October 14:00 - 16:00 CET (online). More information about the workshop will be circulated soon.

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Newsletter [August 2021]

International Conference on Sustainability in Energy and Buildings SEB-21 | 15-17 September
Annex 83 is organising a special session (IS13: Positive Energy Districts) in the SEB-21. Here are titles and authors from the Annex papers:

• A systematic approach towards mapping stakeholders in different phases of PED development – Extending the PED toolbox.
  Caroline Cheng, Vicky Albert-Seifried, Laura Aelenei, Han Vandevyvere, Oscar Seco, M. Nuria Sánchez, Mari Hukkalainen.
• A preliminary analysis of the characterizations of positive energy districts.
  Xingxing Zhang, Santhan Reddy Penaka, Samhita Giriraj, Maria Nuria Sanchez, Paolo Civiero.
• Fundamentals of energy modelling for Positive Energy Districts.
  Luigi Bottecchia, Andrea Gabaldón, Tony Castillo, Silvia Soutullo, Saeed Ranjbar, Ursula Eicker.
• Reviewing challenges and limitations of energy modelling software in the assessment of PEDs using case studies.
  Alberto Belda, Emanuela Giancola, Karen Williams, Sanam Dabirian, Muhyiddine Jradi, Rosaria Volpe, Soroush Samareh Abolhassani, Alberto Fichera, Ursula Eicker. 
• State of the art on sustainability assessment of Positive Energy Districts: methodologies, indicators and future perspectives.
  Francesco Guarino, Adriano Bisello, Dorian Frieden, Joana Bastos, Alberto Brunetti, Maurizio Cellura, Marco Ferraro , Alberto Fichera, Emanuela Giancola, Matthias Haase, Julia Kantorovitch, Camilla Neumann, Rose Mankaa, Ivan Luque Segura, Marzia Traverso, Giovanni Tumminia, Rosaria Volpe, Xiaojin Zhang.
• Sustainable Development Goals and performance measurement of Positive Energy Districts: a methodological approach.
  Maurizio Cellura, Alberto Fichera, Francesco Guarino, Rosaria Volpe.

Webinar 'Spine modelling tools' | 7-10 September 
4 days presentations for introduction and case examples of Spine energy system modelling tools. 
Webinar: http://www.spine-model.org/spine_webinar.htm 

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Newsletter [July 2021]

Upcoming workshop of PED initiatives hosted by EERA JPSC
Annex 83 is participating in the Workshop of PED initiatives on preliminary results: Towards a European PED definition. The workshop will be held on the 17th of September 2021, 10:00 – 12:00 CEST and is hosted by EERA JPSC. The workshop aims to discuss preliminary results of the alignment core group on PED definition and integrated approach and also discuss further PED definition process.

Update from Subtask B
In the bi-monthly meetings of Subtask B, members make presentations on urban data and energy modelling of PED to increase the collaboration between partners. In the last meeting on the 24th of June 2021, Subtask B had presentations on district heating networks from the University of Valladolid with a large monitoring data set available and from the University of Catania on agent based modelling.

In the next meeting on the 25th of August 14:00-16:00 CEST, the two following presentations are planned:

• Xingxing Zhang “Digital Twin for Accelerating Sustainability in Positive Energy District: A Review of Simulation Tools and Applications”,
• Ursula Eicker “Concepts for an automated workflow of district scale building and energy system modeling”. 

New Annex 83 publication
"Characterizing Positive Energy District (PED) through a Preliminary Review of 60 Existing Projects in Europe" Xingxing Zhang, Santhan R. Penaka, Samhita Giriraj, Maria N. Sánchez, Paolo Civiero, and Han Vandevyvere. 2021. Buildings 11, no. 8: 318.
https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11080318

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Newsletter [June 2021]

Reporting Annex 83 in the IEA EBC ExCo meeting

Dr. Francesco Reda, the operating agent of Annex 83, made a presentation in the IEA EBC ExCo meeting on 17.6.2021 and reported the progress of the following work of the Annex:

• the established Annex website, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts
• the PED invited session to be held in the International Conference on Sustainability in Energy and Buildings seb-21.kesinternational.org/cmsISdisplay.php
• the published articles by Annex 83
• the Annex 2nd Working Meeting held in April 2021
• the Annex 83 created PhD students network
• the main achievements per each SubTask of the Annex.

The Annex progress was very well received by the ExCo supervising member.

 

Announcement of a workshop organised by Concordia University

Library workshop for Urban Platform: Use of data libraries and catalogue concepts for energy systems, occupancy, green roofs and other urban domains

 

Time: Monday, July 12, 2021, 9 to 11 AM EST

Workshop presenter: Kai Brassel, Hamburg/Germany

Participation link: https://concordia-ca.zoom.us/j/3850961259

 

The goal of the workshop is to understand data modelling for urban scale applications and to implement such data models in catalogues. These catalogues could be a basis to share information with country specific performance and/or cost data.

 

Background reading: Kai Brassel  shared a tutorial that he wrote especially for domain experts: Kai (Guest): How to Create Parameter Catalogs for Simulations (posted in CERC NextGenCities Platform / Parameter Catalogs at 20. April 2021 19:30:35 MESZ).

NOTE: if you don’t have access to Concordia Teams, you can find it here as well: https://transfer.hft-stuttgart.de/pages/neqmodplus/parameter-catalogs-for-simulation/.

 

The document gives some „historic“ context - IT and project wise - in chapter one. Second chapter, then, explains step-by-step how to practically start with data-modelling. Again, not all technicalities may be important for the first read, but at least you should digest, and ideally exercise, the chapter „How to Implement Parameter Catalogs with Eclipse“. In there you find further references on data modelling, and especially you should carefully look at the 18 slides about Object Oriented Modelling and Domain Models by Steve Easterbrook (University of Toronto, http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/CSC340F/slides/11-objects.pdf).

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Newsletter [May 2021]

Paper submissions for SEB21 Conference
The deadline for papers submission for the PED session of the SEB21 conference has been extended to the 16^th of June! This will give us the chance to increase the Annex participation to the conference. However, do not wait until the last day and try to submit your paper according to the original schedule by the 4^th of June.

Webinar on LowCarbon, Positive Energy Resilient Communities
There will be a webinar that will be held on October 12, 2021, 11:00 am 2:30 pm EST. This Webinar is related to the project: CAE Roadmap to Resilient Ultra-Low Energy Built Environment with Deep Integration of Renewables in 2050. More information at https://annex83.iea-ebc.org/event?EventID=7673. 

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Newsletter [April 2021]

Annex 83 new publication
“A techno-economic analysis of an optimal self-sufficient district” Ari Laitinen, Oscar Lindholm, Ala Hasan, Francesco Reda, Åsa Hedman.
Energy Conversion and Management. Volume 236, 15 May 2021, 114041.
Open access publication https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114041

Note: if you make a publication related to your contribution in Annex 83, please indicate the Annex in the Acknowledgment so that it can shown in the Annex publications news and on the webpage https://annex83.iea-ebc.org/.

Note: If you have a new publication and want it to be listed on Annex 83 website (https://annex83.iea-ebc.org/publications), please send it by email to Anna Kozlowska (anna.kozlowska@ait.ac.at).

Twitter @Annex83_IEA
rom now on Annex 83 has Twitter account @Annex83_IEA which we strongly suggest to follow. 

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2nd Working Meeting [April 2021]

THE EBC Annex 83 held its second Working Meeting on 21^st and 22^nd of April 2021. Around 100 participants from 23 countries took part in several sessions held online. The subtask leaders shared the current status of their groups work and presented the next planned steps.

Since last Working Meeting, Subtask A worked on first version of ST-A data collection table. Subtask B organised two workshops, developed a first version of the PED cases technology review and created a repository for open-source database for PEDs. Subtask C presented the current status of the creation of the repository and informed about upcoming workshop on PED KPIs which will be held on 19-22 of October. Subtask D shared an update on demo case template creation and ongoing collection of PED guidelines. Additionally, all subtasks are working on publications. 

The next Working Meeting is planned for 23-24 of September 2021.

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Newsletter [March 2021]

Next Working Meeting
The Working Meeting of the Annex will be on 21–22 April 2021. Please find the tentative agenda of the meeting from the following Teams link.

Annex 83 PhD students network
In order to create connection between PhD students who are participating in the Annex for collaboration in their research and publications, a survey has been initiated. PhD students are kindly asked to fill out their data from this Teams link indicating their name, email address, affiliation, country, tentative thesis title or main research filed, brief description about the PhD research, and in which subtask they are participating. Please note that there will be a special session (PhD Talk) on the 2nd day of the next Annex Working Meeting (22 April 2021), where some students can present the progress of their PhD research and can discuss with other students.

Session in the International Conference on Sustainability in Energy and Buildings
Annex 83 is arranging a special session (IS13: Positive Energy Districts) in the International Conference on Sustainability in Energy and Buildings SEB-21, 15-17 September 2021 http://seb-21.kesinternational.org/index.php. Two papers from each subtask of the Annex are planned in this session. Deadline for submission is 4th June. 

Annex 83 publications
The first publication of the Annex has been published in Buildings Journal.
Title “IEA EBC Annex83 Positive Energy Districts”. Authors: Åsa Hedman, Hassam Ur Rehman, Andrea Gabaldón, Adriano Bisello, Vicky Albert-Seifried, Xingxing Zhang, Francesco Guarino, Steinar Grynning, Ursula Eicker, Hans-Martin Neumann, Pekka Tuominen and Francesco Reda. Buildings 2021, 11(3), 130. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11030130