NWE (North-West Europe) lacks affordable new low energy housing solutions for 1&2 person households. Existing techniques & practices neglect financial capacities & limited space requirements of this growing group. Thus, occupants often live in too large, expensive & not energy efficient housing units. Offering access to new smaller zero energy/low carbon homes (ZEH) will vastly reduce energy use & CO2 emissions in NWE.

Housing 4.0 Energy will develop an affordable ZEH market by adapting & applying new technologies & creating consumer/supplier interest. It will reduce production costs of new housing units by 25% & CO2 emissions by 60% (compared with average new built houses, lowering both embodied & operational energy). Transnational development & implementation of digitization (4.0) techniques & a digital platform will create fundamental changes in design, manufacture & construction supply chains. Using a client-based approach, all partners will work with social housing companies (the primary target group) & end users in 4 NWE countries (the final beneficiaries). Tests and demonstration will occur in four pilot sites covering varying contexts, from cities in leading low carbon regions to rural areas in less carbon conscientious regions.

The project includes tested, demonstrated and monitored combinations of energy solutions, building techniques, low carbon construction material, all standardised for EU use; an online platform to facilitate digitization of building, transferability of solutions, distributed manufacturing & the emergence of sustainable supply chains; 58 model housing units in 4 countries (1,374 Kt CO2 savings) with consumer evaluations; novel training programmes for the building sector & recommendations for policy makers. In doing so, each partner will establish a regional stakeholder group for roll-out incl. housing companies, authorities, architects, engineers and construction companies using & developing the open source 4.0 platform.