Europe is set to be a global role model in energy transition. It has made significant progress in building level innovations and is now stepping up efforts towards city-wide transformation with the pioneering concept of Positive Energy Districts (PEDs). Positive Energy Districts are an integral part of comprehensive approaches towards sustainable urbanization including technology, spatial, regulatory, financial, legal, social and economic perspectives. They require interaction and integration between buildings, the users and the regional energy, mobility and ICT system. In this sense, a Positive Energy District is seen as an urban neighborhood with annual net zero energy import and net zero CO2 emissions working towards a surplus production of renewable energy, integrated in an urban and regional energy system.
The EU Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) has set out a vision to create 100 PEDs in Europe by 2025. The concept of PEDs is emerging and the knowledge and skills needed for the planning and designing, implementation and monitoring, as well as replication and mainstreaming of PEDs are yet to be advanced. The challenge is cross sectors and domains; thus, the solutions can only be found through collective innovation. European research drives the deployment of PEDs by harmonizing, sharing and disseminating knowledge and breakthroughs on PEDs across different stakeholders, domains and sectors, at the national and European level. The overall aim is to establish a PEDs innovation research ecosystem to facilitate open sharing of knowledge, exchange of ideas, pooling of resources, experimentation of new methods and co-creation of novel solutions across Europe. Additionally, emerging research will support the capacity building of new generation PEDs professionals, Early Career Investigators, as well as experienced practitioners from and across Europe, aiming to collectively contribute to the long-term climate neutral goal.
Sustainability in buildings, districts and cities, as it is understood and practiced today, is now being recognised as an inadequate measure for current and future building design, for it aims no higher than to make buildings "less bad". Alternatively, a "Restorative" approach to the built environment has an enormous and unexplored potential to improve such impact (RESTORE, 2016).
Although the impacts call for the need of adequate technical actions, there is a broad range of qualitative perspectives that are poorly considered by the built environment and by European regulatory frames. As an example, while energy receives a great deal of focus in terms of building sustainability, it is estimated that today at least 10% of health care costs can be attributable to the impact of our built environment resulting, for example, from poor indoor air quality, low levels of comfort, toxicity of building materials, and a disconnection from the health benefits of biophilic design. The influence and impact of the built environment extends beyond the building. Positive Energy Districts holistically seeks to address the ecological and social impacts, upstream impacts from e.g. material sourcing, the impact of construction activity and the downstream influence of buildings to enable or restrict users' health and sustainability behaviors.
The proposed research aims at progressing the debate from an energy centric approach to a more holistic sustainability approach to also embrace health and socially just impacts, benefits, and relationships with natural ecosystems. Thus, within the built environment sustainability agenda, the research project proposes to expand on a narrow focus on building energy performance, adaptation strategies and limiting of environmental impacts, moving towards a broader PEDs framework that "regenerates" places and enriches people, framing ecology, culture, and climate at the core of design, construction and operation activities, with a particular emphasis on concepts such as health and wellbeing, biophilia, and links to the natural ecosystem. The proposed research will specifically address the complexity of a broader range of quantitative and qualitative thinking throughout its actions, seeking opportunities and innovations that will enable multiscale ("scale jumping") thinking from the human micro-scale to the building/district space and mesoscale of city and ecosystem dimensions.
The confrontation with a mixed network of researchers, built environment practitioners, green building consultants and research cooperation initiatives (i.e. the COST Action CA 19126 "PED-EU-NET" network) will enable productive exchanges within this multi-scale thinking approach. The multidisciplinary innovative approach and its scientific, design based, effectiveness will be developed involving young doctoral students and more mature expertise drawn from environmental design, ecology, economy, sociology, planning, construction, human health and wellbeing.
Sapienza researchers will explore emerging challenges facing the built environment. Today, the "green building" paradigm, together with the limitation of environmental impacts and the enactment of adaptation strategies, only partially captures the drivers of the increasing design challenges. The climate change impact on, and of the built environment, the provision of ecosystems services, the prioritization of human health and well-being, user-friendly building operation strategies, and the up-cycling of construction products are the next generation of design targets, and represent a radical shift from the energy-driven and carbon-centred notion of sustainability that, for many years, has been the exclusive remit of mechanical engineers and environmental consultants.
Researchers are being called upon to fully embrace scientific advances that support new targets, expanding design scenarios and exploiting traditional and advanced processes, methods and tools to evaluate, test and provide feedback about innovative solutions that celebrate the richness of design creativity while providing comfort to users in harmony with the enrichment of urban and natural ecosystems.
Ultimately, the proposed research will contribute to the dissemination of the paradigm shift required to move from the energy-centric sustainability thinking, to human and ecosystem-based sustainability; will improve the bases for national and international academic research within the field of Positive Energy Districts and energy transition; will describe to practitioners how to integrate the processes, methods, and tools for the implementation of Positive Energy Districts; will contribute to the foundations of evidence-based design while negotiating through the constraints and opportunities of standards and regulations; will better equip educators and senior researchers to influence architecture doctoral students, at the early stages of their professional career.