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Energy Efficiency Communities – Establishing pilot communities for the building sector (EffCoBuild)

Energy saving potentials in the building sector

In the following the energy balance of the pilot communities, and in particular the energy demand in the buildings sector, was surveyed. On the basis of these investigations the saving potentials in the communities have been identified.

In order to gain the interest of the stakeholders and citizens of different educational background for the idea of energy efficiency, it is important to demonstrate its positive effect in an easily understandable way. One option to visualise these potentials also for “non experts” is to define a “virtual power plant”. This virtual power plant stays for the amount of energy in MW or GWh/a, which does not have anymore to be generated by a real existing power plant or a heating device. By this means the region (the community) can “build up” its own virtual power plant and the future potentials and achieved results can easily be demonstrated to both the citizens and the media.

The four participating communities – representing together ~ 58.000 inhabitants – could identify a saving potential of more than 92 GWh/a. A projection of these savings for the total population in the four participating countries (> 97 million inhabitants) would result in an energy quantity corresponding to the energy production of all German nuclear power plants (~ 156.000 GWh/a)!

To promote these ideas the communities produced posters (see attachment) and started to prepare brochures with best practice examples from the respective ambience.

Building on previous activities and investigations the communities are now working out a tailor-made concept of saving measures. In order to build up awareness and acceptance in the target regions these concepts will be discussed with relevant stakeholders. Further, the concepts will be evaluated and a number of actions will be selected for immediate implementation at this occasion.