To reach a sustainable future, EU is looking for answers on how to regulate the housing industry. In Verksbyen, they are hoping to find the solution with solar energy in a cold climate.
See film about syn.ika and Verksbyen - the lighthouse of Europe
EU-funded research for your future home
Households cause a stunning 20% of all the EU´s greenhouse gas emissions, which is an overlooked fact in a world that too often focuses on cars and plastics. To reach a sustainable future, we need way more than electric cars. We need to rethink how we build and live in our homes. Syn.ikia is a EU-funded research project that aims to find the housing standard of the future. They are looking for answers to the pressing energy and climate challenges the world is increasingly facing.
They will design a blueprint for sustainable plus energy buildings and neighborhoods. Their objective is to create a balanced application of integrated energy design for your next home, and how it will be energy- and cost-effective. But more than your next home, they are providing big data-based solutions for whole neighborhoods that can be applied to the whole of Europe.
The project aims at achieving:
more than 100% energy savings
90% renewable energy generation triggered
100% GHG emission reduction
10% life cycle costs reduction
compared to the 2020 nearly zero-energy buildings (NZEB).
Four pilot projects to showcase the future
The project will pilot four real-life housing projects, which are innovative and leading neighborhood developments in different climate zones in Europe. In Verksbyen, they found the perfect partner to demonstrate the functionality of the plus-energy neighborhood concept in a cold climate.
Team from NTNU together with Arca NovaVerksbyen - A lighthouse in Europe
Verksbyen is a new residential area in Fredrikstad, when fully developed it will offer over 1.500 homes powered with solar energy. It is one of Europe´s most innovative housing project.
Researchers from the syn.ikia project are impressed by the vision of Verksbyen, and its large-scale investment in solar energy and green building solutions.
Inger Andresen, professor in Integrated Energy design at NTNU follows up and explains that Verksbyen is of interest in both national and international contexts, because of its large size, combined with its focus on plus house energy.
- What is most unique about Verksbyen is that it is such a large project, allowing us to measure sustainable energy solutions in a large scale perspective. How a large area can be developed in a more sustainable direction in terms of both energy and how people live, says Inger Andresen.
Verksbyen - a new housing district with over 1.500 houses powered with solar energyInfluence EU regulations
The goal of syn.ikia is to build a blueprint for the future, and that is what they believe Verksbyen will contribute to.
- Verksbyen will certainly be able to influence both EU regulations and national laws and regulations regarding how we ought to build in the future, says Inger Andresen.
- We hope that the project will lead more developers to build such projects and that it, eventually, will become a common standard in Europe. So that the project has the opportunity to spread its impact, technical solutions, and knowledge to the whole of Europe, concludes Inger Andresen.
EU is looking for answers for the housing standard of the future
Led by NTNU
EU has funded syn.ikia with € 6 907 053 and it goes over 4 years. The project is coordinated and led by NTNU in Trondheim. The projects involves 13 partners from a total of six countries: Norway, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Hungary and the Netherlands. In addition to NTNU, its partners are:
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DTU (Technical University of Denmark)
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BPIE (Buildings Performance Institute Europe)
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IREC (Catalonia Energy Research Institute)
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TNO (the Netherlands Organisation for applied scientific research)
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SINTEF
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Housing Europe - the European Federation of Public, Cooperative & Social Housing
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Incasòl - Institut Catalalà del Sòl)
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ENFOR - Energy Forecasting and Optimazation for the Energy Sector
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ABUD - Advanced Building & Urban Design
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Arca Nova Gruppen
