The Pre-Nord_ZEB Project aims to facilitate the development of Main Project to the NPA 5th Call, to address the challenge of achieving Near Zero Energy (NZEB) in historic buildings. Historic buildings in rural, peri-urban and peripheral areas of the Northern Periphery and Arctic Region display many physical and cultural characteristics, that make them iconic and unique. They are often ornately designed, constructed of natural materials (like stone, hand -made brick and wood), using traditional artisan skills, with wooden doors and single-glazed windows which are difficult to upgrade, and cannot be changed. They often have listed facades and unique external and internal architectural features which make them hard to insulate, use obsolete solid and liquid fuel heating systems, that are expensive and difficult to upgrade. In spite of ths , they have irreplaceable value as historic landmarks for the community. Pre-Nord_ZEB aims to address Priority 3 of the NPA Work Programme “Fostering energy secure communities through provision of renewable energy and energy retrofitting”. by enabling he development of a Main Project that will provide a Tool Kit for the NZEB retrofitting of historical buildings in remote, peri-urban and peripheral areas, including the implementation of Demonstration buildings in key NPA regions. The Preparatory Project Consortium consists of 5 Partners with relevant experience and complementary skills: Cork Centre for Architectural Education (IE) – experienced in architecture research and training, Oulu University of Applied Science (FI) – specialist in smart technology, architectural and business development, University of Umea (SE) – experts in renewable energy, architecture and project monitoring and NCE Insulation (IE) – social enterprise actively engaged in retrofitting and renewable energy deployment and Landsverk (FO) – national infrastruture agency.