Universities, R&D Groups and Academic Networks

Residential energy consumption represents the 28% of all EU consumption and if commercial buildings are also considered this percentage increases to 40% (36% of EU CO2 emissions). In this context, is clear that the reduction of consumption in the residential sector should play an important role in energy efficiency programmes and policies as is stated in the recent Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/EU.

Most energy efficiency measures implemented in Europe involve technological interventions. In contrast, everyday energy consuming behaviours are largely habitual and therefore the potential of energy savings at home with actions focused in consumer behaviour is really promising. In this context the provision of feedback to consumers has resulted in really promising results, achieving savings in the range of 5-20%.

But some limitations exists. The aim of NATCONSUMERS project is to fill the gaps and advanced in this context, being an essential preparatory activity for the future large scale demonstration of feedback methodologies. The key aim of this project is to develop an advanced and integral user-centered framework for the implementation of efficient energy feedback programmes in the domestic area. Our approach relies in the complete characterisation of the EU energy consumer, and the design of specific personalised actions tailored to each consumer pattern detected based on the use of natural language and emotional contents.

NATCONSUMERS will set the scenario to allow strengthening the dialogue between the EU energy system stakeholders in order to define robustness methodologies exploiting to the maximum the potential of energy feedback approaches, filling the existing gaps not still covered by previous pilots and experiments. NATCONSUMERS consortium brings together representatives of all stakeholders and areas involved in the project. A concise dissemination and awareness programme is proposed to reach the target communities and increase the impact of the project.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 657672.

NATCONSUMERS: Methodology for the generation of personalized energy recommendations using Natural Language.

The goal of the VaVeL project is to radically advance our ability to use urban data in applications that can identify and address citizen needs and improve urban life. This project will develop a general purpose framework for managing and mining multiple heterogeneous urban data streams for cities become more efficient, productive and resilient. The framework will be able to solve major issues that arise with urban transportation related data and are currently not dealt by existing stream management technologies. The project brings together two European cities that provide diverse large scale data of cross-country origin and real application needs, three major European companies in this space, and a strong group of researchers that have uniquely strong expertise in analyzing real-life urban data. VaVeL aims at making fundamental advances in addressing the most critical inefficiencies of current (big) data management and stream frameworks to cope with emerging urban sensor data thus making European urban data more accessible and easy to use and enhancing.

The project has been supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 688380.

Around 10 Million SMEs across Europe are ICT intensive. This means that almost 1 in every 2 SMEs rely on ICT to run their business. The intensive use of ICT is a positive sign for digitisation of business processes but ICT also comes at a cost, based on the dramatic growth of the ICT environmental footprint & energy consumption.

Did you know that almost 10% of all energy used and 4% of carbon emissions in the environment are calculated as coming from ICT only? By decreasing emissions by just 15%, the ICT sector can make savings of €600 billion by 2020.

ICT itself is a considerable source of carbon emission in the environment, due to e-waste, electricity to power electronic devices, and in particular, because of the huge amount of energy needed to keep ICT products & services and their underlying infrastructure up and running.

ICTFOOTPRINT.eu (http://www.ictfootprint.eu) is the European hub that supports companies of all sizes, public entities and citizens, on becoming more sustainable and energy & environmentally efficient in ICT.

ICTFOOTPRINT.eu provides the right knowledge, technical solutions and motivation to embrace low-carbon & energy efficient solutions in ICT.

The platform offers a set of solutions that help organisation become energy efficient & raise consciousness of methodologies and best practices for sustainable ICT, facilitating the broad deployment and uptake of:

·       The online Marketplace of ICT sustainable solutions: meeting point for ICT sustainable “Sellers” to get together with “Buyers” (SMEs, large corporations, public administrators and citizens) who want to improve their energy efficiency and consequently reduce their carbon footprint.

·       Webinars: providing valuable information, education and training on best ICT green solutions

·       Success Stories: in adoption ICT footprint methodologies & becoming sustainable in ICT, explaining how low-carbon footprint solutions generate cost savings and represent competitive advantages.

·       Self-Assessment Tool:  easy-to-use online tool to help calculate the carbon footprint of ICT services, providing a customised final report on the ICT carbon footprint.

·       Helpdesk: available in 5 languages (EN, FR, DE, ES & IT) to provide assistance to organisations interested in becoming energy efficient.

Want to become low-carbon in ICT? www.ictfootprint.eu is the place to go.

Watch the ICTFOOTPRINT.eu short video to find out more.

ICTFOOTPRINT.eu is a Coordination Support Action (CSA) completely funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme.