Outputs and Results

The Energy Pathfinder project will address Priority 3 of the NPA Work Programme “Fostering energy secure communities through provision of renewable energy and energy retrofitting”. Energy Pathfinder will do this by developing and demonstrating replicable tools for the NZEB retrofitting of historical buildings, including the implementation of demonstration projects in representative NPA regions. The Energy Pathfinder project will address the challenge of achieving Near Zero Energy (NZEB) in historic buildings, in particular those located in rural and peripheral areas of the Northern Periphery and Arctic region. These buildings display challenging characteristics that make them iconic and unique. They are often constructed of natural materials (like stone hand -made brick or wood), using artisan skills, have wooden doors and single-glazed window frames, which are difficult to upgrade, have listed facades and unique external and internal architectural features which make them hard to insulate. They typically use obsolete solid and liquid fuel heating systems, which are expensive and difficult to upgrade. In spite (or because) of this, they are historic and irreplaceable landmarks for the community. The Project Consortium consists of 6 Partners with relevant experience and complementary skills: They include local authorities, agencies responsible for heritage buildings, church bodies responsible for historic buildings and social housing groups aiming to use historic housing.

Identify the main challenges in improving energy efficiency in historic buildings.

Cultural heritage is part of our history and therefore also of our future. Maintaining historical buildings and creating future functions will cost a lot of money and is very difficult. It is even more difficult when it comes to the necessity to make them carbon neutral. These buildings are usually big energy spenders and it is difficult to take the right ‘modern’ measures without affecting historical structures. Again, also these measures cost a lot of money. So innovative solutions and applications are necessary as well as demonstrations and business models.

Historic buildings represent one of the biggest challenges for improving energy efficiency in the NPA region. Energy Pathfinder will work with users, residents and stakeholders in identifying and addressing these challenges.

Develop a Toolkit for Near Zero Energy Retrofitting of historic buildings

 

Building owners and users need an online Toolkit that can be used to chart how Near Zero Energy standards may be achieved in historic buildings in different regions

Demonstrating the Energy Pathfinder Toolkit in historic buildings in different regions

In order to develop and demonstrate the Energy Pathfinder Toolkit in practice, we will work with different historic buildings across the NPA region, to show how they can be brought up to Near Zero Energy Standard with the co-design or residents and users.