Energy CH-IT: A cross-border network for promoting energy saving and sustainability

This work describes the evolution of the Energy CH-IT network from the beginning of a cross-regional applied research project involving universities, associations and private companies to the official creation of an association involving Swiss and Italian companies as well as freelancers. The Energy CH-IT association promotes collaborative projects dealing with energy saving programs, the adoption of sustainable energies and the deployment of new technologies enhancing sustainability. The network offers his services to both private and industrial customers located both in Switzerland and Italy. The variety of offered technologies, requiring different vertical competences, as well as of served markets, both looking at customer typology and location, increases the complexity of the network creation and management. A great challenge is represented by the differences among the applied regulations, the latter are usually created at the national level and only partially integrate international standards. The ad-hoc solutions developed for ensuring the creation of a well-balanced collaborative network and its appropriate functioning are described in this work. The developed methodologies also allows to overcome another great challenge linked to the network composition, more specifically the fact that in the network are active complementary companies but also direct competitors.