The Smart Energy Cluster brings together six leading EU-funded projects, ReSCHOOL, ENPOWER, CRETE VALLEY, SMARTeeSTORY, DEDALUS, and META BUILD, which are collectively driving innovation in sustainable energy through advanced technologies, digitalisation, and community engagement. These projects operate across different parts of the energy value chain, showcasing how Europe’s energy transition can be accelerated by combining building-level solutions with community-driven energy models and smart grid integration.

ReSCHOOL focuses on empowering energy communities by developing innovative tools to manage and trade flexibility, enabling citizens, schools, and local stakeholders to actively participate in energy markets and better coordinate the use of distributed energy resources. ENPOWER complements this by transforming passive energy consumers into active “energy citizens”, leveraging ICT, social and behavioural insights, artificial intelligence, and blockchain to create energy-secure communities and peer-to-peer marketplaces. Similarly, CRETE VALLEY establishes a “Renewable Energy Valley” in Crete, functioning as a decentralised Living Lab that integrates multiple renewable sources, open digital platforms, and community-driven business models to demonstrate energy democracy and test scalable solutions in real-world settings.

On the building side, SMARTeeSTORY accelerates the sustainable retrofit of historic non-residential buildings by deploying interoperable smart building technologies, advanced control systems, and energy optimisation solutions, while respecting heritage constraints. META BUILD focuses on delivering electrification technologies accompanied with novel digital tools for both residential and commercial buildings, promoting integrated solutions such as heat pumps, photovoltaic systems, energy storage, and intelligent management platforms to reduce emissions and improve energy efficiency. Completing this perspective, DEDALUS develops a multi-value, energy-carrier-agnostic demand response ecosystem that combines digital twins, artificial intelligence, and social science insights to optimise residential energy consumption and provide flexible services at both building and district level.

Together, these six projects represent a comprehensive and citizen-centric approach to the energy transition. They connect innovation at the building scale with wider community and grid-oriented solutions, linking digitalisation, demand response, and participatory energy models to deliver scalable and replicable pathways towards decarbonisation. By presenting as a unified cluster at Enlit Europe 2025, the projects aim to demonstrate how collaboration across sectors can overcome regulatory, financial, technical, and behavioural barriers, making sustainable energy solutions more inclusive, accessible, and impactful across Europe.

The scope of the workshop is to bring together the diverse innovations and solutions developed across these projects in order to explore how they can collectively accelerate the energy transition. Through two dedicated sessions, the event will highlight emerging strategies for smart building renovation, energy efficiency, flexibility management, and citizen engagement in local energy markets. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in discussions on how digitalisation, advanced data integration, and innovative business models are reshaping the way energy is managed within buildings and communities. By fostering knowledge exchange and collaboration, the workshop aims to create a platform for stakeholders to explore how Europe can better integrate technology, finance, and community-driven initiatives to meet its ambitious climate and energy objectives.

 Projects Participating include ENPOWER, SmarteesStory, CRETE VALLEY, RESCHOOL, DEDALUS and METABUILD.