The "Efficient Buildings Days: Open up!"/NZB2021 project (full title: NZB2021 ‘Doors Open Days’ – sharing experiences from low energy buildings to meet nearly zero energy building standards by 2021 - Grant Agreement No.: IEE/11/927/SI2.616379), funded by the European Union through its Intelligent Energy Europe programme was launched in August 2012.

The objective of the 3 year project is to provide hands-on-experience with low energy demand buildings (nearly zero-energy buildings, nZEB) to the broad public. Interested people will be able to visit newly built and renovated residential and public buildings in the scope of open days, where they will gain non-commercial firsthand knowledge about the benefits of efficient buildings, learn about the experiences of construction and use, and receive trustful information directly from the owners and builders who have actually carried out the construction or the renovation. We will organize two open days sessions during the autumns of 2013 and 2014 (in collaboration with the National Passive House Open Days).

GreenDependent Institute is the Hungarian partner in the NZB2021 project, which will build on transferring a best practice open doors campaign from Belgium, known as ‘Ecobouwers Opendeur’ to Hungary and to 8 other EU-countries (Germany, France, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, Austria, Malta and Ireland).

Main activity areas of the project are:

• Organization of open days twice, during the autumn of 2013 and 2014
• Development of a webpage in all project languages, including Hungarian, giving thorough information about general features of low energy demand buildings, their construction opportunities and potentials, while also providing a platform for registration to the open days;
• Creation of a database about low energy buildings (nearly zero-energy buildings), planners and constructors;
• Provision of detailed information about nearly zero-energy buildings and the requirements rooted from the Directive on Energy Efficiency and its implementation to the broad public and potential builders and public authorities through a 20-page brochure, leaflets and social networks. These will be broadly, however clearly targeted to interested people through visitors and participating buildings;
• Preparation of a mini-documentary (of about 5 minutes) to disseminate information about the European Energy Performance Directive (EPBD 2010/31/EU);
• Organisation of a short study visit for experts and policy makers to an EU partner country more experienced in low energy buildings (to Germany in case of the Hungarian group).

The following are some of the summary project documents:

• Leading the way towards nearly zero energy buildings – Inspirational examples from regions all over Europe

• Final summary report: Nearly Zero Energy Buildings Open Doors: visit today the buildings of tomorrow

Related news:

Nearly Zero Energy Buildings Open Doors Days in 10 European countries

In Hungary an advisory board provides professional assistance and advice to GreenDependent. The members of the advisory board are:

• Ertsey, Attila - architect DLA, vice president of the Chamber of Hungarian Architects
• Feiler, József - president of the Hungarian Passive House Association
• Medgyasszay, Péter - architect PhD, assistant professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics