The international project REGENERATE kicks off
The vision of the new international project REgENEraTE (REuse for ENergy Exploitation and storage of existing urban Tunnels in Europe), coordinated by Politecnico di Torino, aims to contribute to the spread of positive energy districts by examining the feasibility of using existing underground cavities to host renewable energy production and storage systems and analyzing how these can be integrated into new and existing heating networks.
The kick-off meeting of the project, which is funded under the Driving Urban Transition 2023 call, supported by the European Commission and financed with funds from the Horizon Europe program (g.a. 101069506), was held remotely on December 2nd, 2024. The meeting was attended by representatives of the 17 REGENERATE partners, from Austria, Italy, Germany and Romania, the four countries involved in the project. This international cooperation will allow to study different types of climates, urban environment, building heritage, different energy needs and underground spaces. The possibility of transforming existing underground spaces into energy production and storage systems will be assessed through monitoring in pilot sites and its potential quantified through advanced numerical modeling.
The multidisciplinary team of Politecnico working on this project is led by the coordinator Alessandra Insana, researcher of the Department of Structural, Geotechnical and Building Engineering-DISEG, and is composed of Professor Marco Barla of DISEG, Professors Marta Bottero and Rosa Tamborrino of the Interuniversity Department of Territorial Sciences, Project and Policies-DIST, researchers Caterina Caprioli and Mesut Dinler, also from DIST.
The consortium is made up of 17 partners. As beneficiaries, in addition to Politecnico di Torino, there are the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, the Technical University of Graz, the Technical University of Darmstadt, INFRATRASPORTI.TO and Geosolving Srl. The cooperation partners are: IREN SPA, the Municipality of Cluj-Napoca, the Asociatia Centrul De Resurse Pentru Eficienta Energetica (CREESC), the Municipality of Bregenz, Innsbrucker Kommunalbetriebe AG, Wiener Linien GmbH &CO KG, UHRIG Energie GmbH, DB InfraGO AG, HEAG AG, the Municipality of Münster and the Municipality of Otzberg.
"This is an extraordinary opportunity to collaborate with internationally renowned academic and industrial partners on a topic of strategic relevance: the need to decarbonize the energy system and, in particular, the heating and cooling sector - underlines Alessandra Insana, coordinator of the project - The project will show how underground spaces can be “regenerated” by developing smart approaches to produce and store energy, exploiting local energy sources and buffering the differences between supply and demand, which is one of the critical issues of renewable sources".
REGENERATE partners will officially meet in person for the first time in Turin in 2025 on the occasion of an international conference dedicated to energy geostructures organized at PoliTO.