Several publications were released, presenting aspects ranging from thermal zone optimisation to green integration or thermal and acoustics components.

-          Thermal zone optimisation: the recent trend in food stores is the use of display cabinets closed with glass doors (vs open display cabinets). This trend has an impact on the energy consumed, as refrigeration cabinets cool the environment they are located in while extracting heat from the store. The report proposes two enhanced concepts for thermal zone optimisation within food stores, analysing their effect in terms of energy savings, thermal comfort and costs, as well as the interaction of refrigerated display cabinets with HVAC systems, thanks to simulations. It also analyses the risk of mist formation on closed cabinets.

-          Green integration: this report presents the impact of adding vegetation on buildings and their surroundings, focusing on shopping centres, especially the demo cases of Valladolid and Genoa. Passive and active solutions as well as greenery strategies to enhance the heat transport through the façade are introduced. Several ways to integrate the vegetation are analysed: roof, wall, indoor, etc. Finally, modelling and simulations are performed to assess sensitivity, including different climate, environmental and hardiness zones. The goal was to develop guidelines for optimal greenery integration in shopping centres, taking into account building features in architectural and physical terms.

-          Thermal and acoustic components: Echoing in commercial spaces appears to be of growing importance, creating discomfort for customers. D’Appolonia, in collaboration with two producers of insulation material, developed a new material presented in this report. The study also digs into design guidelines and regulations for thermal and acoustic panels in shopping centres. It presents existing thermal insulating and sound-absorbing technologies and analyses competitors.

-          Integrative modelling environment: The planning of a high quality shopping centre retrofitting requires taking into consideration different aspects simultaneously: climate, architecture, HVAC, lighting, refrigeration, etc. Each system has an influence on the building behaviour and consequently on other systems: the IME, based on the Trnsys simulation software, allows a holistic consideration of the effects of each measure, including understanding expected energy penalties or benefits. The use of building energy dynamic simulations is widespread within other building categories, whereas new for shopping centres, due to their complexity.
This report presents the IME approach and structure as well as models envelope solutions (building energy model, daylighting, green wall, multifunctional coatings) and active solutions (artificial lighting, electric storage, refrigeration system, HVAC system and control strategies). The understanding of these interactions can lead to equipment downsizing, or even elimination and subsequent capital cost reductions. To this aim, retrofitting measures should be evaluated as packages. The modelling of a shopping centre before and after retrofitting through IME allows characterising energy savings (to support decision-making), defining and optimising control algorithms at the whole building or sub-system level, assessing thermal comfort conditions and addressing optimal scenarios by overall energy system parametrisation.

-          Shopping centre energy distribution: the report presents state of the art, proposed concepts and scenarios for refrigeration systems focusing on actual technologies with pros and cons of each solution. The purpose was to define conceptual solutions and prototypes of refrigeration systems able to exchange data and energy within the shopping centre to improve peak load handling and to reduce energy consumption.

-          Online Shopping centre assessment tool: a short paper presents goals and functionalities of this recently-launched tool.

-          Position paper on standardisation: this paper explores EU building codes and normative instruments for energy efficiency and analyses potential legislative and normative barriers per technology (ventilative cooling, green integration, smart coatings, etc.), providing possible solutions to overcome the barriers. Additionally, an overview of the existing certification schemes and their relative metrics is included. Important policy conclusions to improve building codes are provided.