Ricerc@Sapienza

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.