StepUP project partners participate in the Sustainable Places Conference
The StepUP project has been represented in two different sessions held within the 9th annual edition of the Sustainable Places Conference, which has been celebrated in a hybrid format from 28th September – 1st October 2021.
Project’s coordinator Giulia Barbano from Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES), participated in the workshop “Modularity and Industrialisation of Building Envelope Kits: Challenges, propositions and Barriers towards deep-renovation” and presented StepUP as a key European project aimed at transforming the energy market and increase the rate of renovation across Europe, by promoting a deep renovation and decarbonisation of existing buildings. During the presentation, Barbano gave a general overview about the project explaining its main objectives, the solutions developed, the pilots and the key challenges.
This workshop included a first part in which participants discussed the various challenges and propositions introduced and identified projects common barriers. These propositions embody the preliminary findings of ongoing research projects and reflect the preconditions needed to be met applying their solutions in the deep-renovation market. The second part of the workshop was focused on discussing how the identified adoption and market barriers need to be overcome in order to meet the identified preconditions to successfully introduce industrialised modular product systems in deep-renovation projects.
Figure 1: Hands-on activity to identify market barriers
This session also included the participation of Drive 0, ProGETonE, INFINITE, Plural Project and ENSARE, five other EU-funded projects promoting innovative solutions for boosting deep renovation in Europe.
On the other hand, Anna Batallé, researcher at Product Development Unit of Eurecat, presented the StepUP project under the title “Plug and Play Market Solutions for Renovation”, during the paper session “Renovation Cases and Tools Part 1”.
The StepUP P&P solution is an industrialised modular system that adapts to different building layouts and technical requirements. The P&P Envelope is the prefabricated facade module within StepUP that aims to improve the passive system of the building by diminishing the energy demand, while SmartHeat is a heat storage battery that focuses on enhancing the active system performance.
During the Conference a poster based on StepUP project has been exhibited, giving a general explanation about the project’s objectives and main work done, as well as the technologies developed and the three pilots in which solutions are being demonstrated.
Download the poster exhibited here
Sustainable Places is a yearly conference for the dissemination of research, the conduct of workshops, EU project clustering and networking between stakeholders of all types. In 2021 edition, the event has lasted over four days in a hybrid (digital + in-person) format and counted with the participation of +150 EU projects. Between opening and closing keynote sessions, parallel technical sessions and project-organized workshops will explore the various conference themes.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 847053.
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