To achieve the “well below 2 degrees” targets, a new ecosystem needs to be defined where citizens become more active, co-managing with relevant stakeholders, the government, and third parties. This means moving from the traditional concept of citizens-as-consumers towards energy citizenship. Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) will be the test-bed area where this transformation will take place through social, technological, and governance innovation. This paper focuses on benefits and barriers towards energy citizenships and gathers a diverse set of experiences for the definition of PEDs and Local Energy Markets from the Horizon2020 Smart Cities and Communities projects: Making City, Pocityf, and Atelier.

Purpose: The need to speed up and simplify the practice of transformation and the topic of reuse is crucial in Italy. The purpose of this paper is to compare successful cases of reuse into housing in Italy and the Netherlands, in order to suggest improvements to the Italian situation. Design/methodology/approach: Previous research at the University of Pavia showed the need to change living standards for new residential buildings. This research focusses on existing buildings and gives a comparative analysis of the Italian and Dutch legislation for residential buildings. Interviews with professionals have been conducted in Italy and the Netherlands to better understand the differences and problems related to housing regulations. Good examples of reuse into housing have been studied to define common guidelines for intervention. Findings: The findings describe the building regulations in Italy and the Netherlands concerning adaptive reuse, and reveals differences between the two countries. Furthermore, the possibilities and barriers for the reuse of existing buildings are highlighted. Practical implications: Lessons are drawn from both contexts, and finally suggestions for improvement of the regulatory system are made for Italy and the Netherlands. Originality/value: This paper aims at revealing the opportunities and barriers of reuse in Italy and the Netherlands. So far, studies were performed to reveal the feasibility of adaptive reuse, though none of these focussed specifically on legal issues. No sufficient studies are performed so far on reuse into housing in Italy, and the comparison of the regulatory systems of the two countries is novel.

Both the operational phase and embodied emissions that are introduced during the construction phase through the manufacture, sourcing, and installation of the building's materials and components are significant contributors to carbon emissions from the built environment. It is essential to change the current design and (re)construction processes in order to achieve the energy-saving targets for the EU building stock and move toward a society that is net carbon neutral. This change must be made from both a technical perspective as well as from a methodological perspective. To accomplish this, the EU has suggested several regulations and legislative steps to phase out inefficient structures. The most recent of these initiatives propose the idea of a Digital Building Logbook, which serves as a central repository for all pertinent building data, including information on energy efficiency. In this work, we present a survey of the elements that have been taken into consideration for the creation of the Digital Building Logbook to give an overview of what research has been done so far.

Ninety percent of the existing building stock in Europe was built before 1990. These buildings are in urgent need for a significant improvement of energy-efficiency through renovation. State-of-the-art renovation solutions are available, but costly and lengthy renovation processes and incomprehensible technical complexities hinder the achievement of a wide impact at a European scale. This paper presents a research on Plug-and-Play (PnP) technologies supported by Building Information Modelling (BIM) to provide affordable, interchangeable and quick-installation solutions to overcome the main barriers of building deep renovation.

Ninety percent of the existing building stock in Europe was built before 1990. These buildings are in urgent need for a significant improvement of energy-efficiency through renovation. Regrettably, so far only five percent of renovation projects have been able to yield energy-saving at deep renovation level. State-of-the-art renovation solutions are available, but costly and lengthy renovation processes and incomprehensible technical complexities hinder the achievement of a wide impact at a European scale. This paper presents research on Plug-and-Play (PnP) technologies supported by Building Information Modelling (BIM) to provide affordable, interchangeable and quick-installation solutions to overcome the main barriers of building deep renovation.

At present European buildings typically consume two to five times more energy than predicted at the design stage. An important cause of this performance gap is the discrepancies between the design specification and the As-Built condition. Such discrepancies are mainly due to the gaps in knowhow between design, production and construction professionals. Design is more and more contained into a virtual environment and loses touch with the physical production and construction sites. As the construction sector enters the Industry 4.0 era, Building Information Modelling (BIM) based Mixed Reality can intertwine virtual and real worlds to bridge the knowhow gaps.