South East Europe strategic partnership in vocational education and training in Passive House Design for nearly zero energy buildings development Erasmus Project

Project Title

South East Europe strategic partnership in vocational education and training in Passive House Design for nearly zero energy buildings development

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Energy and resources; Health and wellbeing; Recognition, transparency, certification

Project Summary

The EU introduced the policy on moving towards nearly-zero energy buildings by the end of the year 2020 (Directive 2010/31/EU), defining the nearly zero-energy building (nZEB) as a building that has a very high energy performance. However, in 2013, the European Commission (EC) reported that too little progress has been made by the Member States in their preparations towards nZEBs by 2020. The slow progress towards implementation of the corresponding nZEB EU Directive was mainly due to the fact that the Directive did not address building sector’s uptake solutions directly. However, in one of the reports the EC had defined very low energy houses also as passive houses, suggesting the national governments to relate their nZEB solutions to already proved high performance solutions, such as passive house design solutions. Because Passive House design had already been translated into principles and solutions across Europe and wider, it directly corresponds to the specific issues of the nZEB implementation.
Successful implementation of the nZEB criteria in member states can thus be assured by applying the Passive House design principles and solutions already available and proven in the building sector across Europe and beyond. Therefore, an in-depth education on Passive House design was the main focus of the project proposal.The consortium was formed by partner countries which on their national level completely lackes Passive House design education (Croatia), partner countries which at the time of the start of the Project had already had introduced Certified Passive House Designer education (CPHD/CEPH) (Greece, Italy), and a partner country which, as the intellectual and geographical origin of the Passive House Concept and with by far the widest practical experience thus far has pioneered the way (Germany). All the partner countries shared the need to adapt the CEPH education curriculum to regional and climate dependent building practices.
The Coordinator of the project is Oikon Ltd.-Institute of Applied Ecology, in Zagreb, Croatia. The second Croatian national partner is the Faculty of Civil Engineering from the University of Zagreb. International partnership is formed with Hellenic Passive House Institute (HPHI-Greece), Zero energy and Passivhaus Institue for Research (ZEPHIR-Italy) and Passive House Institute Dr. Wolfgang Feist (PHI-Germany). Partner organizations ZEPHIR and HPHI are both affiliates of the International Passive House Association (iPHA) which is hosted by the Passive House Institute (PHI) and Course Providers in cooperation with PHI from Darmstadt, Germany. Using the existing materials of the CEPH project, HPHI, ZEPHIR and PHI assured the expertise and experience support on preparing the rest of the Consortium in delivering the Certified Passive House Designer education. Each partner country had at least one Certified Passive House Designer within the participating partner’s organization.
Throughout the project’s activities all project partners contributed to the development of the regionally customized education materials for Certified Passive House Designers as the main objective of the project, as an addition to the existing training material for Passive House Designers.
The currently available CEPH education materials, which resulted from the project by the same name (Certified passive House Designer), supported by the IEE action, are focused on the Central European climate and reflect Central European building practice and traditions. Since the end of the CEPH project, a lot of research has been done on the Passive House standard in different climates zones. The SEEDpass Consortium developed new additional materials, reflecting the Passive House education to the South East European climate, building practices and traditions. Moreover, the materials related to the building practice in each partner country with the regional Climate specifics. A priority of the Consortium was to elaborate the additional educational materials related to the project partners’ countries climate and regional building practice specifics and to contribute to the update of the previously carried out CEPH project accordingly. Here, teaching materials on cooling and dehumidification were developed to meet the demand for detailed training of architects and engineers. In terms of employment, regionally based education on design of high performance buildings is the key success to demand side of the building’s sector labor market. It strengthens the framework conditions for regional companies to respond to new structural challenges of the building sector and assures project partner’s competitiveness on international markets. Besides establishing internationally comparative building sector expertise, the long term aim of the project is to reinforce and accelerate the implementation of the nZEB Directive by prioritizing adequate Passivhaus education on national level, which assures project’s sustainability.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 258690 Eur

Project Coordinator

OIKON DOO – INSTITUT ZA PRIMIJENJENU EKOLOGIJU & Country: HR

Project Partners

• SVEUCILISTE U ZAGREBU GRADEVINSKI FAKULTET
• HELLENIC PASSIVE HOUSE INSTITUTE
• WOLFGANG FEIST
• ZEPHIR S.r.l.