School of the Future - Towards zero emission with high performance indoor environment

The aim of the School of the Future project (www.school-of-the-future.eu [1]), which receives funding within the EU's 7th Framework Programme, is to design, demonstrate, evaluate and communicate shining examples of how to reach the future high-performance building level. School buildings and their primary users, namely pupils - the next generation - are in the focus of the project. Both, the energy and indoor environment performance of 4 demonstration buildings in 4 European countries and climates are being greatly improved due to holistic retrofit of the building envelope, the service systems, the integration of renewables and building management systems. The results and the accompanying research and dissemination efforts to support other actors dealing with building retrofits are leading to a multiplied impact on other schools and on the residential sector, since the pupils will act as communicators to their families. The user behaviour and the awareness of energy efficiency and indoor environment are being improved due to tailored training sessions. Nearly zero emission or nearly zero energy buildings are main goals in various country roadmaps for 2020. The demonstration buildings of this project may not completely reach this level, though, as the aim of the FP7 call is cost efficiency and multiplication potential. The retrofit concepts, however, result in buildings with far lower energy consumption than achieved by regular retrofits and focus on high indoor environment quality - thus leading the way towards zero emission. They can be considered as schools of the future. Results from national examples of zero emission schools complete the information used for developing the deliverables such as guidelines, information tools, publications and a community at the EU BUILD UP portal. The project is based on a close connection between demonstration, research and industry which is being represented by the Design Advice and Evaluation Group. This group of research and industry partners meets twice at every demonstration building site in order to give advice to the local planning group like informing them about suitable up-to-date technologies. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.