From ‘Zero’ to ‘Positive’ Energy Concepts and from Buildings to Districts—A Portfolio of 51 European Success Stories

Since 2020, Europe has introduced strategies and key policies to promote common efforts on a roadmap toward energy efficiency and decarbonization. From ‘low’ to ‘passive’ and from ‘zero’ to ‘positive’, the concepts have fascinated the scientific community around the globe and promise the deployment of planning responses to the challenges of decarbonization faced by the European and local agendas. This works provides an overview of a comprehensive understanding of emerging concepts with a focus beyond the boundaries of an individual building. The booklet of 51 European projects, firstly introduced in Joint Programming Initiative documents, unveiled the prioritization of energy efficiency and the path for the enhancement of environmentally friendly communities. In this sense, this work presents an overview of the Net-Zero Energy Districts, and beyond, namely through the discussion of different aspects and dimensions. Based on published scientific literature, this work collects, organizes and discusses approaches of European cases, concluding with the knowledge base to support further developments and reinforce an established pathway for future implementations