EUropean cities serving as Green Urban Gate towards Leadership in sustainable Energy

The EU-GUGLE project mobilises public/private resources to build showcases of totally around 226,000 m2 of cost-efficient urban Zero Carbon Building Renovation models in Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy, Slovakia and Spain (together with the associated Swedish and Turkish cities) with a strong potential for replication throughout Europe. EU-GUGLE is designed to respond to the needs of an effective take-off of the Smart City initiative in the frame of the European SET-plan and in particular by demonstrating different sustainable energy technologies and techniques integrated in an intelligent way within lighthouse buildings. Although the individual demonstration projects are independent from each other, being designed to fulfil local building-user needs and utilising local resources perfectly integrated in these smart objects, there are many similarities between them. The foreseen implementation plan is a symbiosis of integrating activities, such as · Sharing latest research results especially of retrofitting technologies and intelligent RES integration into buildings · Demonstrating appropriate energy solutions in order to reach energy savings of 25.6 GWh/a for heating and DHW and 2.5 GWh/a for electricity in terms of primary energy · Establishing adequate business environment favourable for Smart City demonstrations · Serving as benchmark for sustainable buildings & districts and spreading best-practice · Implementing innovative retrofitting technologies and techniques validated in six partner cities · Developing a transparent EU-GUGLE model for immediate replication in three associated cities & abroad. · Connecting social needs of building-users with innovative market actors. · Aiming at new urban image & higher aesthetic quality for the involved buildings, thus contributing to enhance the sense of community.By deploying an interdisciplinary approach, an innovative/cost-efficient mix of actions, a set of sustainability oriented solutions will be pointed out and transferred to and among the identified target groups of EU-GUGLE. The outcomes and related benefits will be fully exploited by an effective range of actions generating local activities with high visibility character together with the major stakeholders.