Sometimes seen as highly energy-consuming buildings, shopping centres have though the potential to be energy efficient and reach the environmental and energy goals of the EU. The retail industry’s size, reach and impact have a great deal of potential which can be exploited in order to make a difference and transform shopping centres into best-practice cases for sustainability.

The EU-funded project, CommONEnergy seized the challenge to help re-conceptualising these peculiar, complex buildings and turn them into beacons of energy efficiency. The aim being to provide smart, innovative and cost-effective solutions for deep and systemic retrofitting while ensuring that of all the involved stakeholders’ needs are met.

The purpose of this event will be to demonstrate to policy-makers and other participants the importance of having commercial buildings as a focus in the building-related directives. Especially as commercial centres currently represent 28% of the total non-residential building stock. We aim to achieve a policy shift with a higher focus on these topics in the forthcoming EU building-related directives, and to put the topic higher in the agenda at the EU level. Participants of the event will get insights into the current mentions of commercial buildings into national building codes and how to frame policies for them as well as dive into the importance of innovating to improve comfort, reduce energy consumption and stick to the EU climate goals.

Spotlight will be put on how to frame policies, integrating the CommONEnergy project results into policy-making with recommendations for new and existing commercial buildings. Shopping centres features in EU28 + Norway will be presented as well as the three demonstration cases lessons-learned and replication potential. The importance of innovation will be highlighted, with a session on technologies improving comfort and reducing energy consumption in shopping centres.