Publications || IEA EBC || Annex 83

Factsheet: Positive Energy Districts (PDF 0.42MB)
June 2020
Energy and Emission Implications of Electric Vehicles Integration with Nearly and Net Zero Energy Buildings
October 2021
Author(s): Rehman, H.u.; Diriken, J.; Hasan, A.; Verbeke, S.; Reda, F
Publisher: MDPI
Buildings and the mobility sectors are the two sectors that currently utilize large amount of fossil-based energy. The aim of the paper is to, critically analyse the integration of electric vehicles (EV) energy load with the building’s energy load. The qualitative and quantitative methods are used to analyse the nearly/net zero energy buildings and the mobility plans of the Europe along with the challenges of the plans. It is proposed to either include or exclude the EV load within the building’s energy load and follow the emissions calculation path, rather than energy calculation path for buildings to identify the benefits. Two real case studies in a central European climate are used to analysis the energy performance of the building with and without EV load integration and the emissions produced due to their interaction. It is shown that by replacing fossil-fuel cars with EVs within the building boundary, overall emissions can be reduced by 11–35% depending on the case study. However, the energy demand increased by 27–95% when the EV load was added with the building load. Hence, the goal to reach the nearly/net zero energy building target becomes more challenging. Therefore, the emission path can present the benefits of EV and building load integration.
- Full Report (PDF 4.31MB)
Integrating Plus Energy Buildings and Districts with the EU Energy Community Framework: Regulatory Opportunities, Barriers and Technological Solutions
October 2021
Author(s): 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.
Publisher: MDPI
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.
- Full Report (PDF 0.53MB)
Qualitative Assessment Methodology for Positive Energy District Planning Guidelines
September 2021
Author(s): Hans-Martin Neumann; Sergio Díaz Garayo; Niki Gaitani; Daniele Vettorato; Laura Aelenei; Judith Borsboom; Ghazal Etminan; Anna Kozlowska; Francesco Reda; Jørgen Rose; Pekka Tuominen
Publisher: Springer, Singapore
Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) have recently become an important concept for urban development. However, the number of publications on the transfer of the PED concept to practice is still very limited. This conference paper presents an analysis of the current state of the art in guidelines regarding the planning and implementation of PEDs based on the analysis of 25 PED guidelines reported by anonymous contributors, collaborating in the development of the IEA EBC Annex 83 activities. From this analysis, it becomes clear that nearly all documents including were produced in the period 2018–2020. Most guidelines address local and/or regional governments, focusing predominantly on urban development and planning processes or technological solutions, mostly at the scale level of the district or city, and less often at building block or individual building level. Although some of the documents are journal papers with a very narrow view on specific technological design or implementation aspects, seven guidelines can provide city administrations, urban stakeholders, solution providers and research with overall information on and suggestions for the process of planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluation of PEDs, and a description of the potential impact of PEDs. They result of the analysis will serve as baseline for the future work within IEA Annex 83, in particular for drafting IEA Annex 83 guidelines for the planning and implementation of PEDs.
ISBN: 978-981-16-6269-0
Characterizing Positive Energy District (PED) through a Preliminary Review of 60 Existing Projects in Europe
July 2021
Author(s): Xingxing Zhang, Santhan R. Penaka, Samhita Giriraj, Maria N. Sánchez, Paolo Civiero, Han Vandevyvere
Editor(s): Francesco Nocera
Publisher: MDPI
Positive Energy District (PED) is recently proposed to be an integral part of a district/urban energy system with a corresponding positive influence. Thus, the PED concept could become the key solution to energy system transition towards carbon neutrality. This paper intends to report and visualize the initial analytical results of 60 existing PED projects in Europe about their main characteristics, including geographical information, spatial-temporal scale, energy concepts, building archetypes, finance source, keywords, finance model and challenges/barriers. As a result, a dedicated date base is developed and it could be further expanded/interoperated through an interactive dashboard. It is found that Norway and Italy have the most PED projects so far. Many PED projects state a ‘yearly’ time scale while nearly 1/3 projects have less than 0.2 km2 area in terms of spatial scale. The private investment together with regional/national grants is commonly observed. A mixture of residential, commercial and office/social buildings are found. The most common renewable energy systems include solar energy, district heating/cooling, wind and geothermal energy. Challenges and barriers for PED related projects vary from the planning stage to the implementation stage. Furthermore, the text mining approach is applied to examine the keywords or concentrations of PED-related projects at different stages. These preliminary results are expected to give useful guidance for future PED definitions and proposals of ‘reference PED'.
- Full Report (PDF 5.67MB)
A techno-economic analysis of an optimal self-sufficient district
April 2021
Author(s): Ari Laitinen, Oscar Lindholm, Ala Hasan, Francesco Reda, Åsa Hedman
Many cities and districts have announced that their ultimate goal is to be energy self-sufficient, but there are many technical and economic challenges that are required to be studied. The aim of this study is to find cost- optimal technical solutions for districts with high energy self-sufficiency rates that can cover their electricity demand. Two methods are applied, a rule-based method and an optimization method, to find the renewable energy system capacities for local centralized wind power, solar photovoltaic, battery, heat storage and heat pump in a district with a minimum life cycle cost. The Kalasatama district in Helsinki-Finland, is taken as a case study. The results show that the full energy self-sufficiency target requires very high investments in the renewable energy systems. For the studied case, reducing the self-sufficiency rate to 76% can bring down the life cycle cost by 66% and achieve a net-zero annual energy balance. It is economically and technically more feasible to aim achieving Positive Energy District or Net-Zero Energy District instead of full energy self-sufficiency. Based on the obtained results, the main investment should be made in wind power, due to its higher utilization rate around the year compared to solar photovoltaic. Investments in the expensive centralized battery storage sharply drops when the self-sufficiency rate is reduced from 100%. It is revealed that due to the high population density and limited availability of renewables, the physical boundary of a district may not fit the required renewable energy installations if high self-sufficiency is targeted. This will frequently lead to expanding the district boundary towards a virtual balancing boundary.
- techno-economic_analysis (PDF 2.95MB)
IEA EBC Annex83 Positive Energy Districts (PDF 1.58MB)
March 2021
Author(s): Åsa Hedman, Hassam Ur Rehman, et al.
Publisher: MDPI
At a global level, the need for energy efficiency and an increased share of renewable energy sources is evident, as is the crucial role of cities due to the rapid urbanization rate. As a consequence of this, the research work related to Positive Energy Districts (PED) has accelerated in recent years. A common shared definition, as well as technological approaches or methodological issues related to PEDs are still unclear in this development and a global scientific discussion is needed. The International Energy Agency’s Energy in Buildings and Communities Programme (IEA EBC) Annex 83 is the main platform for this international scientific debate and research. This paper describes the challenges of PEDs and the issues that are open for discussions and how the Annex 83 is planned and organized to facilitate this and to actively steer the development of PEDs major leaps forward. The main topics of discussion in the PED context are the role and importance of definitions of PEDs, virtual and geographical boundaries in PEDs, the role of different stakeholders, evaluation approaches, and the learnings of realized PED projects.

Annex 83 Publications