"This project aims to promote and develop policies to enhance the energy performance of traditional buildings with concurrent actions to reduce carbon emissions and preserve their cultural identity."
VIOLET was born out of a common desire to address the challenges of building traditional buildings. The rehabilitation and re-use of these traditional buildings is of paramount importance since important traditional buildings remain unused and stagnant. Most of the minimum energy efficiency requirements are excluded, with the result that many of them do not provide the appropriate thermal comfort conditions and / or have high operating costs, high energy consumption and therefore high CO2 emissions. This contributes to the fact that these buildings were built in a completely different structured environment and in different climatic conditions. Also, most of them were built for different use and under different conditions, to meet the needs. VIOLET seeks to resolve this issue by improving or developing relevant policies so that these buildings can be restored in an energy efficient manner while preserving their cultural identity.
In particular, the VIOLET project promotes multidisciplinary cooperation between local actors in the design of new strategies, new legislation and standards, integrating energy and cultural heritage aspects. It builds on the analysis of the requirements of traditional buildings in all the areas involved and through the identification and study of examples of "Good Practice", aims to create Action Plans to improve national / local policies. The ultimate goal of VIOLET in Cyprus is to mobilize investments to upgrade existing traditional public buildings and to secure funds for this purpose through the Structural Funds.
The project activities benefit from European funding through the transnational European Cooperation Program, "Interreg Europe". The 5-year project is led by the Regional Development Organization of Southeastern Romania (SE RDA) and consists of a group of five other European partners:
- European Institute of Innovation and Technology (Germany)
- Cyprus Energy Agency (Cyprus)
- Public Company for Social Housing and Renovation in Andalusia, Regional Ministry of Public Works and Housing (Spain)
- Municipality of Middelburg (Netherlands)
- Local Energy and Climate Energy Office (France)
In this context, the project also provides for the organization of educational workshops and stakeholder meetings, during which the progress of the project will be analyzed and useful tools will be presented for the promotion and development of policies for the proper rehabilitation of traditional buildings.
At 11 and 12 in April, the opening meeting of the European project VIOLET was held in Tulcea, Romania.