Financing Energy Saving Solutions for SMEs

Project Information

FINESSS

Grant agreement ID: 717707

DOI 10.3030/717707

Project closed

EC signature date 25 February 2016

Start date 1 March 2016

End date 30 November 2016

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost € 71 429,00

EU contribution € 50 000,00

Coordinated by

VOLGROEN BV
Netherlands

Objective

The EU wishes to improve energy efficiency (EE) by 20% in 2020. SMEs represent 40% of EUs economy, but they invest too little in EE, because it’s not their core business and they lack suitable financing options. 70% of SMEs indicate that they would consider investing if finance was available.
It is Volgroen's ambition to become SMEs largest provider of financed Energy Efficiency measures. Through partners (equipment providers, contractors, EE consultants) Volgroen offers finance to SME customers who can now directly benefit from energy savings without hassle and without having to make direct investments. By aggregating small-scale EE investments through its scalable partner network, Volgroen enables financial markets to invest in these small scale energy saving measures.
Volgroen intends to perform a quick scan in 15 different EU countries and seek detailed market information on three questions: What are legislative aspects, what are financing and refinancing possibilities and what are the market aspects for each country. The results from the quick scan will be validated in detail for 3 to 4 countries. A business plan ‘Volgroen European expansion’ is elaborated with focus on the 3 to 4 scanned and validated countries.
Volgroen has innovative web-based back-office processes, procedures, systems and databases, allowing them to offer financing starting at €2.000 to SMEs for EE investments. SMEs start paying less for their energy on day 1. On average they save €4 for each invested Euro. Their partners may use Volgroen’s infrastructure to change from selling technology to providing energy savings. This paradigm shift has proven increased sales of EE measures by the partners in the Netherlands, Volgroen’s home market and through pilots in Germany and Belgium. Now Volgroen wishes to expand their scalable and replicable business model for small scale energy saving measures for SMEs to other countries and create a €500 million fund by 2020.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• engineering and technology › environmental engineering › energy and fuels › renewable energy
• natural sciences › computer and information sciences › databases
• social sciences › economics and business › business and management › business models
• social sciences › economics and business › business and management › employment

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

• H2020-EU.3.3. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy Main Programme
• H2020-EU.2.3.1. - Mainstreaming SME support, especially through a dedicated instrument

Topic(s)

• SIE-01-2015-1 - Stimulating the innovation potential of SMEs for a low carbon energy system

Call for proposal

H2020-SMEInst-2014-2015

See other projects for this call

Sub call

H2020-SMEINST-1-2015

Funding Scheme

SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1

Coordinator

VOLGROEN BV

• Net EU contribution: € 50 000,00
• Address: PLOTTERWEG 31 ; 3821 BB AMERSFOORT ; Netherlands
• SME The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed. Yes:
  Region
  West-Nederland › Utrecht › Utrecht
• Region: West-Nederland › Utrecht › Utrecht
• Activity type: Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
• Total cost: € 71 429,00