COHERENO

To this end, cooperation between all those involved in the construction process was subsidised and new business models were developed and established throughout Europe for achieving nearly zero-energy houses.

Refurbishment to a nearly zero-energy building (NZEB) standard, as provided for in the current version of the EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, is a key pillar for achieving the EU’s 20-20-20 targets in the area of energy and climate protection. The owner-occupier segment accounts for a significant proportion of the total residential building stock in Europe and was therefore at the centre of COHERENO.

The first stage of the three-year project was to identify and analyse successful, highly efficient refurbishment examples and networks that were already operating successfully. These were analysed with regard to their cooperation across companies and sectors.

On this basis, various models for promising, cross-sector collaborations were developed in the second stage. These can also provide contractors with attractive offers for all aspects of energy-efficiency refurbishment projects. To this end, various events were held for all those involved in the construction process, from energy consultants and architects to bricklayers and electricians. These events delved deeper into the topic of developing business models for refurbishment to nearly zero-energy house standards.

The COHERENO project was funded by the European Commission as part of the ‘Intelligent Energy Europe’ (IEE) programme. dena was the project partner in Germany responsible for the COHERENO project. Other project partners included the following institutions: Delft University of Technology – the Netherlands; Passive House Platform (PHP) – Belgium; Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) – Belgium; Flemish Construction Confederation (VCB) – Brussels, Belgium; Austrian Society for Environment and Technology (ÖGUT) – Vienna, Austria; SEGEL, Management Consultancy – Norway; SINTEF Buildings and Infrastructure – Norway; Building Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) – Brussels, Belgium.