Sustainable Buildings spin-off wins Pioneers prize

The Sustainable Buildings team, a spin-off of the Distributed Systems research group of the University of Groningen, won 1st prize and the Community Award at the international Pioneers Festival in Vienna. The Pioneers Festival is Europe ’ s major conference for startups that annually attracts over 2,000 representatives of startups, corporates, investors and media. The prize won by the Sustainable Buildings startup is worth EUR 12,000 and includes a working trip for the team, visual identity design and sales support.

The Groningen team competed for this year ’ s Community Award with 150 other startups from various fields. The winner was determined by a voting open to the public via the Pioneers website for 10 days. In the end, the Sustainable Buildings startup won with 2,130 votes, leaving the runner-up behind by 600 votes.

Working prototype
The Sustainable Buildings initiative has as main goal to make office buildings more energy efficient and therefore sustainable. To do that, they provide a cloud-based software solution relying on advanced sensing technology. Their first prototypes are already working in the University ’ s Bernouilliborg building at the Zernike campus, where energy consumption is reduced by controlling the lighting, PCs and other appliances.

Energy optimization
In the coming period, the team will extend their system to control heating in the University ’ s Heymansbuilding. Moreover, they provide advanced monitoring and displaying solution that helps facility managers to do energy optimization, as well as helping building users to become aware about their consumption, get more personalization in their working environment, and contribute to energy saving.

For all those who would like to stay informed about the team ’ s developments, please follow their Facebook page or website .