SARA aims to construct six sustainable, cost effective, high energy performance, public-access eco-buildings that are immediately replicable at large scale in many locations and demonstrate the cost-effective potential for improving the energy performance of Europe’s buildings. The project officially started in June 2004 and will finish in May 2008.

The eco-buildings will be equipped with advanced sustainable energy technologies integrated by an innovative architectural approach and combined monitoring and building management systems (BMS).

Given that public-access buildings tend to have relatively intense energy consumption the overall impact in terms of absolute energy savings and pollution reduction will be particularly significant.

SARA involves the demonstration of 6 highly sustainable and replicable Public-access buildings in 6 EC Member States (E, F, I, Sl, UK) and one 1 new Independent State (UZ). There are 14 participants in the project: the promoters and research organisations of the countries involved in the 6 demonstration countries plus research and technical development (RTD) from Germany. In order to obtain efficient integration, demonstration is focussed locally with horizontal transfer of knowledge between eco-buildings provided by a expert advice team. Other concentrated teams of participants are working in parallel on specific RTD issues related to integration of BMS, remote monitoring, internet based dissemination, socio-economics studies and training so as to exploit synergies of all aspects of the project.

The key aspects of the project are public-access, innovative yet cost effective and replicable results, consideration of end users and an interdisciplinary team working on various RTD activities. These aspects, applied across various climatic regions will produce large scale social, urban and environmental benefits. The project will therefore contribute to future development of European energy policy and legislation that will accelerate market penetration of innovative sustainable technologies.

Update 2007: Four Eco-buildings are now complete and occupied; in Spain, in Slovenia as well as the two occupied in 2006, in the UK and France. Monitoring of energy performance and user satisfaction in the UK are well underway, and monitoring modalities in the other projects is being finalised. The two refurbishment projects (Italy and Uzbekistan) have benefited from considerable energy design advice within the SARA project. Project modifications were undertaken early in 2007, as the Austrian project chose to withdraw from the programme for timing reasons.