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News 22 September 2021

Positive Energy Districts: Towards a European Integrated Framework

In Autumn 2020, EERA JP Smart Cities initiated alignment meetings between the Smart Cities Marketplace, the Driving Urban Transitions Partnership and SET-Plan Action 3.2, the COST Action PED-EU-NET, IEA EBC Annex 83, the SCC01 TG Replication and SCALE, to discuss how to cooperate and complement each other on Positive Energy Districts. All of these programmes work with these topics, but with different types of stakeholders and instruments.

The alignment includes, amongst others, the creation of an integrated PED definition and framework that will be comparable transnationally, with measurable KPIs that can support the European mission of achieving 100 PEDs by 2025 (SET-Plan Action 3.2), and support the PED calls to be launched by the PED programme and the PED pillar of the soon-to-be-launched Driving Urban Transitions Partnerships.

We aim for the process to be inclusive and transparent, making sure of good representation of nationalities and disciplines, with a balance between a scientific and political approach. 

After a series of internal working meetings, on 17-22 September 2021 we organised a series of 3 public workshops on this topic to gain input from researchers and practitioners: a research workshop on 17 September 2021, a public workshop “Positive Energy Districts that are inclusive, beautiful, resilient and sustainable: towards a European framework” on 20 September 2021 during the Nordic Edge Expo, and a research workshop on 22 September 2021 during the Nordic Edge / UiS Research Symposium on Smart Cities. All workshops were hosted by NTNU in cooperation with EERA JPSC and SET-Plan Action 3.2.