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AREA hosts a meeting with its European project partners to launch pilot actions involving energy efficiency technologies. 

Energy efficiency in buildings: kick-off meeting for the Emilie project


16.04.2013 -

Keywords: energy efficiency in buildings. Goal: retrofitting, innovating, and inventing solutions to make existing buildings "greener". This is the framework for the European project EMILIE (Enhancing Mediterranean Initiatives Leading SMEs to innovation in building energy efficiency technologies), which officially starts for the kick-off meeting of its partners at Trieste's AREA Science Park on 16 and 17 April.

 

The project, funded by the "Mediterraneo" transnational cooperation programme, aims to support the growth potential and capacity for innovation of SMEs in the field of energy efficiency in buildings in the tertiary sector at the transnational level, in order to actively contribute to growth, competitiveness, and employment in the Mediterranean area. On the one hand, it supports innovation through the identification, testing, and dissemination of new products and technologies, and on the other the development of a plurality of activities to support SMEs. The project will organize technical workshops for the presentation of new technologies that have been mapped at the European and global levels, and tested in regional and local administrations in charge of managing public buildings, and especially public contracts for building construction and renovation.

 

Additionally, the project will carry out pilot actions, one for each project partner: demonstrative workshops/plants open to private firms. In particular, a solar cooling plant will be built in Italy, a technology that consists of combining thermal solar panels and a refrigerating machine.  The goal is to use a heat source to produce cold, in the shape of refrigerated water or air conditioning. Solar cooling takes advantage of the hours with maximum solar exposure, which in summer coincides with peak demand for air conditioning in buildings.

 

EMILIE is an outgrowth of MARIE - Mediterranean Building Rethinking For Energy Efficiency Improvement, a strategic project funded by the "MED" European transnational cooperation programme,  which represents the response of regions in Mediterranean Europe to the demand for improved energy efficiency in buildings, with a special focus on private firms working in this sector, in order to support their innovative processes.

 

The project involves five countries (Spain, France, Slovenia, Croatia, and Italy), and six partners: AREA Science Park (coordinator), IAT (Andalusian Institute of Technology); CIRCE - Centro de investigación de recursos y consumos energéticos - Zaragoza; Capenergies Energy Cluster; Jože Štefan Research Institute, Regional Energy Agency Kvarner (Rijeka).

 

Associate partners are: the Piedmont Region, the Friuli Venezia Giulia Autonomous Region, the Basilicata Region, the Italian CONFAPI confederation of small and medium enterprises; the Ministry of Town and County Planning and Sustainability -Government of Catalonia,  the Andalusian Energy Agency, the Andalusian association of promoters and producers of renewable energy; Region PACA (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur), the French Riviera Chamber of Commerce; and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia.

 

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