Low-Carbon Districts – activities
Our offering
Efficacity and its partners are developing a suite of software solutions for the design of low-carbon districts, aimed at all urban actors: local authorities, planners, developers, engineers, energy firms and urban services, during the project design stages. This toolkit will help to optimize the energy and environmental performance of new-build, renovation or combined projects.
A suite of software solutions intended for all urban actors
- EnergyMapper, to identify all the reservoirs of renewable and recovered energy (R&RE) resources in a territory, and provide a technical, economic and environmental analysis of their exploitability; EnergyMapper incorporates the Recov’Heat recoverable energy software;
- EnergyScreener, which selects and ranks the most pertinent energy systems at district or even territory scale, in both economic and environmental terms.
- PowerDIS, simulation software providing decision support on the ultimate choice of energy systems thanks to full dynamic simulation (generation, networks, consumption and production) and the ability to compare multi-energy scenarios (electricity, heating/cooling and gas), whether centralized, decentralized or combined;
- UrbanPrint, to assess the environmental impacts on the basis of LCA (life cycle assessment) of every component of a development project at district scale, bringing in elements of quantitative analysis of environmental performance (using ADEME’s QEC – Quartier Energie Carbone – method), and offer decision support on selecting the levers deployable to maximize performance.
- OptiGrid: to apply an optimal management strategy for an electricity micro-grid and its storage system in particular.
Tools already widely used by a number of territories
- Efficacity tools have been used in R&D partnerships in France since 2019, and in operational projects since 2021. This includes the EnergyMapper/Recov’Heat, EnergyScreener and PowerDIS suite for renewable and recoverable energy (R&RE) supply, diagnostics of a district’s requirements, opportunity studies for district heating and cooling (DHC) networks, technical and economic feasibility studies for DHC networks, DHC and energy master plans; OptiGrid to establish a management strategy for an electricity micro-grid, and which is now being deployed in a number of projects with industrial partners, and UrbanPrint, in use since 2020 to analyse district-scale environmental impacts for dozens of projects.
- Since 2021, several of these tools have also been deployed internationally.
Efficacity is also developing a major technical and contractual innovation focusing on project build and operate phases:
- the district-scale energy performance contract or district EPC: a disruptive approach that aims to establish the terms of a legal and financial commitment attached to the energy performance of a district, applicable to both buildings and energy networks.
Examples of partnerships with actors on the ground and pilot communities
- Recov’Heat: Brest Metropolitan Area, CD 93;
- EnergyScreener: Toulouse/Europolia;
- PowerDIS: EPA Paris-Saclay, the Principality of Monaco’s Energy Transition Taskforce;
- UrbanPrint: a number of pilot operations such as the Portes de Paris business park, Cité Descartes in Champs-sur-Marne, Marne Europe in Villiers-sur-Marne, Issy Cœur de Ville eco-district in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Les Fabriques in Marseille, Toulouse Raynal, etc.