ReLIFE launched to boost building renovations in Europe

The ReLIFE project has been launched to unlock data to accelerate energy efficient renovations of homes and buildings in Europe.

The ReLIFE project, supported by the EU LIFE programme, is aimed to build an open source platform with data to inform homeowners, financial institutions and other stakeholders planning energy efficiency renovations.

Buildings in the EU account for over a third of the region’s energy-related emissions.

However, around three-quarters of them are estimated to be performing poorly in terms of energy efficiency. Despite ambitious targets, such as the 11.7% reduction in energy use by 2030 in the recently revised Energy Efficiency Directive, the annual renovation rate is low at just 1%.

Have you read?
Tech talk | Green buildings for the future
Project WeForming: Revolutionising intelligent grid-forming buildings

“Building owners, tenants and managers often lack accessible, reliable data to make informed energy decisions,” comments Simon Pezzutto, team leader at Bolzano, Italy-based Eurac Research and ReLIFE project coordinator.

“We hope to offer open access to high-quality building-related data into energy use, performance and financing to unlock Europe’s building stock transformation and sustainable future.”

The ReLIFE project’s open source platform is planned to serve as a central hub for essential building information across Europe, with a focus on energy-related data for energy efficient renovations and emissions reductions, mainly in the residential sector.

Both static and dynamic data sources are intended, including for example satellite and aerial imagery to ensure a reliable database on the building stock and its energy performance.

Three key services are envisaged – financial service, offering intuitive financial and economic assessments for deep renovation projects, forecasting service, generating projections for future renovation rates and decarbonization scenarios, and technical service, categorising deep renovation technologies based on market maturity, energy efficiency, etc.

The ReLIFE project kicked off in October 2024 with €1.98 million (U$2.1 million) in European Commission funding towards its €2.1 million budget.

The project is set to run over three years under a twelve partner consortium from six European countries and practical case studies are planned to test and refine the solutions.