BIPV solutions in district renovations towards nearly zero-energy cities

The current building stock is formed by about 160 million buildings in EU-25 (the 25 EU member states up to 31st December 2006) that represent about 40 per cent of the energy consumption, and 36 per cent of the EU’s total CO2 emissions. The construction of new buildings represents only 1–1.5 per cent of the building stock,1 so the focus needs to be put on renovation of existing buildings to achieve substantial impact in energy saving and GHG reduction. In this sense, the purpose of R2CITIES project, funded by the European Commission through its Seventh Framework Programme, is to develop and demonstrate replicable strategies for designing, constructing and managing large-scale district renovation projects in order to achieve nearly zero-energy cities. These results will open the way for new refurbishments on a European scale within the framework of new urban energy planning strategies. One of the innovations of R2CITIES is the implementation of Building Integrated Photovoltaic Solutions (BIPV)2 for districts retrofitting, used for replacing conventional building materials which have the advantage of generating electricity, while at the same time providing passive benefits such as heat insulation, daylight entrance and acoustic comfort. Onyx Solar has studied the behaviour of the PV ventilated façade in three European demonstration sites located in Kartal (Turkey), Genoa (Italy) and Valladolid (Spain). In addition, it is expected to obtain an innovative urban mobility concept related to the renovation at district level focused on the development of a PV parking lot for public lighting and charge of electric vehicles. This paper is focused on explaining the main BIPV solutions and their application for R2CITIES. 1Leonardo Energy, ‘Connecting Energy Technologies, Policies and Markets’, available at: http://www.leonardo-energy.org (accessed 1st October, 2016). 2EU Commission (2015), R2CITIES ‘Annex I: Description of Work (after amendment), Gran Agreement no. 314473’, Seventh Framework Programme.