The EU project Sinfonia (Smart INitiative of cities Fully cOmmitted to iNvest In Advanced large-scaled energy solutions) with more than 30 partners from eight European countries (13 from Tyrol and 8 from South Tyrol) is funded under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7) within the conveying line "Smart Cities & Communities".
Project coordinator is the SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden. The local manager for Tirol is the “Standortagentur Tirol” (business-promotion agency). The Sinfonia project officially started in June 2014 and will continue for next 5 years. The EU financially supports by 27.5 million euros the planned activities which are converted into projects in a total value of 43.1 million euros. Innsbruck East will invest into the local project in total 21.4 million euros, of which around 12.2 million euros will come from the EU. The project Sinfonia will trigger an overall investment of up to 125 million euros in Innsbruck.
In the selected parts of Innsbruck and Bolzano, the energy demand will be reduced by 40 to 50 percent, the share of renewable energy sources in electricity and heat supply will be increased by 30 percent and CO2 emissions will be reduced by 20 percent. The successful measures in these two pioneer cities will be adapted for implementation by five following “early adopters” European cities – Rosenheim (Germany), La Rochelle (France), Seville (Spain), Paphos (Cyprus) and Boras (Sweden).
Sinfonia-related refurbishment projects in Innsbruck
In Innsbruck apartments with a total floor area of 66,000 m2 owned by housing companies “Neue Heimat Tirol” and “Innsbrucker Immobiliengesellschaft” will be renovated. The work at the University of Innsbruck is divided into several working groups. Within Institute of Engineering and Materials Science is a team led by professors Streicher, Feist and Pfluger (Energy Efficient Buildings), Flach (Timber constructions). At the faculty of architecture is the Urban and Regional Planning team of Prof. Schneider. Role of teams of university is to give scientific consultancy and design assistance on planed measures and to perform comprehensive measurements before and after the measures to prove the actual gain in efficiency. The tenants of affected homes are involved in all processes of the project. Comparison is based on the actual level of efficiency and share of renewables of the test area ("District") according to the Innsbruck energy development plan, which will be adapted in the context of Sinfonia.
Building to be refurbished and corresponding thermographic image
Besides the housing associations, also the local electricity and gas suppliers IKB and TIGAS are involved in "Sinfonia". They are involved in increasing the share of renewables within electricity and heat supply e.g. by photovoltaic systems, advanced cogeneration, solar thermal, heat-cold storage, heat pumps for exploiting local sources of waste heat and supply of heat via district heating networks. In the east part of Innsbruck IKB will install a so-called "smart grid" as part of Sinfonia in order to interconnect the local power generation systems, the storage systems and the consumer´s site. In the field of heating, cooling and their distribution, measures for use of waste heat on an industrial and commercial level are planned. For example heat recovery from the sewers and the sewage-treatment-plants or from the tunnel-water of the Brenner Base Tunnel are foreseen. Moreover it is planned to use modern cogeneration plants for heat and power production as well as involvement of interconnected decentralized heat pumps to provide heating and cooling.
