Multidisciplinary and multi sector lighthouses | case studies | Deliverable D2.2

RES4CITY is a 36-month project funded by the European Commission, initiated in October 2022. Its primary objective is to advance the development of sustainable renewables and fuel technologies within cities. This is achieved by collaborative efforts in designing innovative educational micro-programmes involving various stakeholders. The project also emphasizes the promotion of sustainability and circularity, bridging the knowledge and skills gaps essential for a successful energy transition. This deliverable, designated as D.2.2 RES4CITY multidisciplinary and multi sector lighthouses, is developed under task T2.2 Lighthouse case studies development of the RES4CITY project during M12 (September 2023). Task T2.2 builds upon the energy-related urban challenges identified in T2.1 Innovative sustainable strategies for carbon neutral smart cities. In essence, task T2.2 focuses on creating lighthouse case studies that address these identified challenges. To ensure a comprehensive and effective approach, task T2.2 collaborates closely with task T3.2, actively engaging the community of stakeholders. The culmination of these collaborative efforts results in the production of pre-feasibility analyses tailored to the specific urban context under consideration. The document comprises three chapters. The first chapter introduces task T2.2, which involved the development of ten lighthouse case studies by project partners, along with their corresponding HUBs. This chapter describes the approach to ensuring clarity and enhancing reader comprehension, thereby amplifying the impact and dissemination of these case studies. To achieve this, the case studies followed a predefined template designed with a structure like that of a scientific article. This structure encompasses not only an introductory section addressing the challenge under scrutiny and introducing the case study but also includes sections dedicated to presenting results, recommendations, and conclusions. In the second chapter, the ten lighthouse case studies are compiled and presented individually. This set of lighthouse case studies contributes to fulfilling the RES4CITY’s Milestone 11 Lighthouse available for case study education. Each case study is accompanied by an executive summary, which complements the existing Abstract and Graphical Abstract elements that are part of the case study structure. The objective of creating this executive summary is to provide an additional resource that can be examined independently of the complete case study. Its purpose is to facilitate an understanding of the subject matter and the case study itself while highlighting key results and conclusions. This approach enables the case studies to be used independently. Within the framework of this Deliverable, the executive summary serves as tool for readers to grasp the key points of each case study swiftly and concisely. This empowers readers to determine, based on their interests and requirements, whether they want to delve deeper into the individual case studies for more detailed analysis. In the third and concluding chapter, each lighthouse case study developed by the project partners is presented in a straightforward and concise manner. Furthermore, this chapter highlights key concluding remarques derived from each of the case studies. Lastly, it emphasizes the dual purposes for which these case studies were developed: as learning tools in the RES4CITY learning and upskilling programs and as multipliers for replication in other contexts. The Deliverable 2.2 was concluded and submitted in September 2023 by (UCOI) with the support of the partners listed in Table 1

Evaluating the Energy Performance of 20 Portuguese Wastewater Treatment Plants

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) perform a prominent role in minimizing adverse environmental and human health impacts by subjecting wastewater to proper treatment, which ensures the quality of the treated water before discharging or reusing. Due to the complexity and diversity of processes involved, WWTPs are regarded as energy-intensive facilities, with energy costs accounting the second largest share of their operating costs. Energy demand in this sector is expected to continue the growth shown in the last decades due to the increase in the number of people gaining access to improved sanitation facilities and to more stringent regulatory and environmental protection standards. Consequently, to ensure the sector’s long-term sustainability it is essential to evaluate and improve the efficiency of the WWTPs using a holistic approach, by integrating environmental and economic features. In this paper, data from 20 Portuguese WWTPs located at the North of Portugal were analysed to compare their energy performance. For this, some simple performance indicators are employed and the underlying factors affecting energy consumption are evaluated. From this study is possible to verify that, for the sampled WWTPs, population equivalent and size do not influence their energy requirements, while the presence of a primary treatment stage shows some influence. Moreover, it also shows that, despite allowing some interesting conclusions, comparing WWTPs should not be performed using only a few simple KPIs and must include other features that influence their process to avoid biased conclusions

Analysis of Climate Change Impact on the Energy Performance of Small Dwellings Located in Porto

The energy performance of buildings is heavily affected by weather conditions. This study evaluates the impact of climate change on the heating and cooling energy demand in dwellings located in Porto, Portugal. A synthetic dataset of 50 generated two-storey residential buildings is evaluated using dynamic simulation to assess the energy consumption for air-conditioning in three future climate change weather years. The reference weather dataset corresponds to representative months of measurements from the 1990s, while the future weather data (30-year means) are morphed from Global Circulation Model (GCM) Hadley Centre Coupled Model, version 3 (HadCM3), for the projected years of 2020, 2050, and 2080. The main conclusions are that energy demand will increase in every climate change projection year for all generated buildings and some geometries present higher resilience to energy performance variation, thus requiring further studies to determine the best design guidelines for future scenario of warming climate

A Survey on the Impact of Energy and Buildings Sustainability Initiatives in University Campuses

University campuses are complex structures, generally consisting in large amounts of built-up area and of users involved in a diversity of activities, resulting in a substantial consumption of resources, waste generation and greenhouse gases emissions, similarly to an urban community. Acting on the use phase, the so-called operations, offers the possibility of improving the environmental performance of buildings, facilities and outdoor spaces, resulting in higher savings rates at a short and medium term. Sustainability initiatives on campus operations may be arranged in several key areas, such as Energy, Buildings, Waste, Water, Transportation, Air and Climate and Food. This work focus on Energy and Buildings initiatives, by reviewing those studied or effectively implemented in university campuses with reported results in scientific publications. Literature shows a wide range and diversity of results. This work intends, thus, to understand those results, by exploring the extent to which the success of initiatives is related to campuses characteristics, particularly to the campuses dimension. The results of this work show a tendency for smaller campuses to present better results on the feasibility of actions, through higher rates of energy consumption decrease; larger ones present diverse impacts, being their probability of success dependent on the addition of supporting measures to the energy generation, as the implementation of energy storage or microgrids. These findings, even recognizing the need of more research to produce more robust conclusions, can help to identify key points for actions to optimize the adoption of sustainable strategies according to each campus specificities, and to succeed in the accomplishment of the sustainable campus principle

Daylight Modelling of a Portuguese Baroque Library

The XVIII century baroque King John’s Library is one of the most important buildings of the University of Coimbra, which was declared World Heritage patrimony by UNESCO in 2013. As one of the main touristic attractions, it has been object of study on the assessment of the books and furniture conservation. One of the aspects that affect their preservation is the exposure to daylight, which degrades the shelves finishing and the books covers and paper. To prevent the continuous degradation of the patrimony, this work presents a study of the indoor daylight conditions. The software Radiance is used in order to generate accurate annual illuminance maps and detailed daylight indoors images. The results show that natural lighting is a threat to most of the patrimony and must be reduced. This analysis is a contribution to determine an appropriate and comprehensive preservation strategy leaving space to further investigation within this field

An Aiding Tool for Building Design Generation, Thermal Assessment and Optimization -- EnergyPlus Interaction Overview

A building design aiding tool for space allocation and thermal performance optimization is being developed to help practitioners during the building space planning phase, predicting how it will behave regarding energy consumption and thermal comfort. The tool evaluates, ranks, and optimizes generated floor plans according to thermal performance criteria, using the dynamic simulation program EnergyPlus. The tool is currently able to use a wide variety of EnergyPlus objects, allowing for various template and detailed HVAC, DHW, and thermal and electrical energy production systems and components, as well as numerous internal gains types, construction elements and energy saving controls, to be accounted for and simulated in the generated buildings. This paper presents the tool overall concept as well as the main features regarding dynamic simulation. Some performance results are presented for distinct systems to illustrate the use and potential of the tool

Supplementary material for the manuscript titled "The effectiveness of the Iranian building code in mitigating climate change in Bandar Abbas"

The supplementary material includes of two sections; Section 1 of the supplementary material provides information on the internal gain specifications used to validate a real building in Iran.  In Section 2, graphs depict the monthly electricity consumption of buildings with varying energy levels across different scenarios and timeframes. </p