ABSTRACT
The project addresses the need to reduce energy consumption of the public sector in Europe by a very significant amount to meet overall emission reduction targets. Building on existing services providing feedback on energy consumption, a comprehensive SMARTSPACES service will be developed, comprising advanced Energy Decision Support and Awareness Services (EDSS), which deliver direct timely and comprehensible feedback on the impact of behaviour on a full range of energy uses enabling professionals/ staff/visitors to avoid existing energy waste, and Energy Management Services (EMS) for the public building sector, which use automatic control systems to markedly improve management of both demand for resources and their supply.

The proposed EDSS addressed to professional building managers (PEDSS), staff in buildings (SEDSS) and visitors (VEDSS) will be designed to respond to the motivational and comprehension needs of the different target groups. The consortium will build on a strong track record of providing online access to building users and providing services visualising energy consumption using benchmarks. Different benchmarks can improve energy consumption awareness potentially resulting in a change of behaviour of building users. Users include both those who more or less permanently work in the buildings and visitors, whose presence in the buildings is only temporary (e.g. museum and art gallery visitors but also pupils and students). The new services are to have the potential to meet needs of a large segment of the public sector. The proposed EMS – including central EMS (CEMS), local EMS (LEMS), peak shaving EMS (PEMS) and EMS for renewable management (REMS) are addressed to building professionals, from caretakers through other dedicated building management staff to building users specifically given the ability to adjust settings affecting energy consumption, be it in short-term or seasonal settings. Subsets of these users will be able to monitor and adjust heating, cooling, and airconditioning (HVAC), including all vents and circuits, electric and natural lighting including thermal effects, elevators and escalators, servers and IT-infrastructure, energy consumption by any other appliances, water resources and consumption as well as other devices consuming energy. EMS also includes renewable energy produced either on site through solar, wind and geothermal facilities as well as heating or electric grids. The SMARTSPACES service is suited to cooperative management of energy investments and costs e.g. with ESCOs allowing for contracting schemes and/or finding energy settings with optimal financial outcome.