On Thursday 1 October, the Assembly Hall of the School of Industrial Engineering (ETSII) hosted the 2026 Annual Conference of the Chair for Urban Energy Transition at the Universitat Politècnica de València, “València Ciudad Inteligente y Sostenible: De la Eficiencia Edificatoria a la Gestión Estratégica del Territorio” (València, a Smart and Sustainable City: From Building Efficiency to Strategic Territorial Management). Participants from academia, public administration, business and social organisations spent the morning discussing how to move València towards climate neutrality. Some 70 people attended despite the weather alert, in a hall with capacity for 100.
Salvador Coll Arnau, Vice-Rector for Innovation and Transfer at the UPV; Carla Montagud Montalvá, Director of the Chair; and Carlos Luis Mundina Gómez, City Councillor for Waste, Climate Improvement and Water Management at València City Council, opened the day. The programme then moved from the building to the city: integrating ZEB buildings into smart cities, industrialising energy retrofits, managing energy in large facilities and building energy communities. The round table, moderated by Juanma Rodilla Navarro of València Innovation Capital, focused on the human factor in the smart and sustainable city.
The alert also meant the schedule had to be rearranged and the School closed earlier than planned. Almost the entire programme went ahead, but Tomás Gómez Navarro, Professor at the UPV and researcher at the IIE, was unable to give his talk on the resilience of energy infrastructure to extreme weather events. That the alert should crowd out this very talk shows how timely the subject is. So that his work still reaches the audience, we are sharing his slides, the full report on the resilience of energy infrastructure and the webinar in which he presented the report, alongside the other presentations.
Thank you to everyone who took part, whether as speakers or in the audience, to the ETSII for hosting the conference, and to València Sostenible and València Innovation Capital, of València City Council, for their support. We look forward to seeing you at the next edition.
Presentations and photos
The conference presentations, including Tomás Gómez Navarro’s materials, and the photos are now available. All presentations are in Spanish.
Programme
Keynote
Integrating ZEBs into Smart Cities: synergies between Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Digitalisation and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)
Javier Rey Martínez, Professor at the University of Valladolid
Session 1. Innovation and sustainability in building: industrialising urban retrofitting
Industrialising energy retrofitting
Eric Aurenche, Energiesprong Global Alliance
Energy use, appliances and energy consumption habits in the residential sector
Sergio Vázquez Peláez, Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE)
Initiatives and tools to drive industrialisation in retrofitting
Cristina Jareño Escudero, Valencian Building Institute (IVE)
Round table. Beyond technology: the human factor in the smart and sustainable city
Moderator: Juanma Rodilla Navarro, R&D&I Officer at València Innovation Capital
Cote Romero, Head of Innovation at Ecooo Energía Ciudadana
Sandra Boni, Professor at the UPV and researcher at INGENIO
Roberto Ballester, social entrepreneur and founder of Felidarity
Núria Baeza Roca, President of AeioLuz and representative of the Ecosocial Group of the Official College of Social Work
Session 2. Sustainable urban ecosystems: from asset operation to resilient planning
Energy efficiency improvement project at the Museu de les Ciències
Félix Almerich González, Energy Manager at the City of Arts and Sciences
Open-governance energy communities: a matter of trust
Daniel Rubio Signes, industrial energy community manager
The resilience of energy infrastructure to extreme weather events
Tomás Gómez Navarro, Professor at the UPV and researcher at the IIE
Not presented on the day because of the School’s early closure. His slides, the full report and the webinar are available with the other presentations.
Organised by: Chair for Urban Energy Transition (CATENERG), Universitat Politècnica de València
Funded by: València Sostenible and València Innovation Capital, València City Council
Hosted by: School of Industrial Engineering (ETSII)
