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There are international activities and on-going initiatives, particularly at the European level, to define what Positive Energy Districts should be, as the driving concept for the urban transition to a sustainable future. The first objective of the paper is to contribute to the on-going and lively debate about the definition of the notion of Sustainable Plus Energy Neighbourhood (SPEN), which highlights the multiple dimensions when talking about sustainability in districts moving beyond the traditional and strict building energy assessment. Based on a holistic methodology which ensures the consideration of the multidimensional nature and goals of SPEN, the paper outlines an evaluation framework. The evaluation framework defines the key performance indicators distributed in five categories that consider energy and power performance, GHG emissions, indoor environmental quality, smartness, flexibility, life cycle costs and social sustainability. This framework is designed to be implemented during integrated design processes aiming to select design options for a neighbourhood as well within during the operational phase for monitoring its performance. Further work will include the implementation and validation of the framework in four real-life positive energy neighbourhoods in different climate zones of Europe as part of syn.ikia H2020 project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strong interdependency between economic growth and conventional energy consumption have led to significant environmental impact, especially with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. Conventional energy-intensive industries release increasing quantities every year, which has prompted global leaders to consider new approaches based on sustainable consumption. The main purpose of this research is to propose a new energy index that accounts for the complexity and interdependences between the research variables. The methodology is based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and combines the key components determined into a score that allows for both temporal and cross-country comparisons. All data analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 25™. The main findings show that most countries improved their economic performance since 2014, but the speed of the improvement varies a lot from one country to another. The final score determined reflects the complex changes taking place in each country and the efficiency of the governmental measures for sustainable economic growth based on low energy consumption and low environmental pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]