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’.

There are international activities and on-going initiatives, particularly at the European level, to define what Positive Energy Districts should be, as the driving concept for the urban transition to a sustainable future. The first objective of the paper is to contribute to the on-going and lively debate about the definition of the notion of Sustainable Plus Energy Neighbourhood (SPEN), which highlights the multiple dimensions when talking about sustainability in districts moving beyond the traditional and strict building energy assessment. Based on a holistic methodology which ensures the consideration of the multidimensional nature and goals of SPEN, the paper outlines an evaluation framework. The evaluation framework defines the key performance indicators distributed in five categories that consider energy and power performance, GHG emissions, indoor environmental quality, smartness, flexibility, life cycle costs and social sustainability. This framework is designed to be implemented during integrated design processes aiming to select design options for a neighbourhood as well within during the operational phase for monitoring its performance. Further work will include the implementation and validation of the framework in four real-life positive energy neighbourhoods in different climate zones of Europe as part of syn.ikia H2020 project.

Cities generate about 85% of the EU’s GDP. As such, they are key players in shaping and providing technological and social innovations but also environmental impact. Thus, they must urgently engage in unprecedented systemic transformational and bold transitions towards sustainability and climate neutrality. The contribution—taking into account that the concepts of community resilience and urban transition have changed as a consequence of COVID-19—critically discusses innovative frameworks and funding opportunities that Horizon Europe will put in place to boost sustainable urban areas in Europe, driving a transition to 100 Positive Energy Districts and 100 climate-neutral cities by 2030.

In this paper, we provide a view of the ongoing PEDRERA project, whose main scope is to design a district simulation model able to set and analyze a reliable prediction of potential business scenarios on large scale retrofitting actions, and to evaluate the overall co-benefits resulting from the renovation process of a cluster of buildings. According to this purpose and to a Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) approach, the model combines systemized data—at both building and district scale—from multiple sources and domains. A sensitive analysis of 200 scenarios provided a quick perception on how results will change once inputs are defined, and how attended results will answer to stakeholders’ requirements. In order to enable a clever input analysis and to appraise wide-ranging ranks of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) suited to each stakeholder and design phase targets, the model is currently under the implementation in the urbanZEB tool’s web platform.

Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) are considered as one of the pioneer strategies to guide cities in their energy planning process towards climate neutrality in an attractive, innovative and human-centered way. The concept of PED is the result of a long co-creation process and integrates several multidimensional features, aiming to promote the sustainable development of urban areas and the transition of cities towards a climate neutral energy system. The paper provides an overview of the first outcomes of WG1 “PED Mapping, Characterization and Learning”, in the research COST Action CA19126 “Positive Energy Districts European Network” (PED-EU-NET). This study describes activities that focus on creating a comprehensive PED-Database by mapping existing concepts, strategies, projects, technological and non-technological solutions related to PEDs in Europe. The main objective of the Database is to support municipalities through the decision-making process by providing strategies for building and running a successful PED that can provide alternatives to consider, and is powered by an interactive web-based map. The design of the Database framework is supported by a step-by-step methodology adopted in the framework of the CA19126 in order to develop the PED-Database as an interactive, updatable and user-friendly tool.