Overall, the Innovate project serves as the accelerator for renovation one-stop-shops. 11 territories developed and rolled-out integrated energy retrofit packages for homeowners of single-family houses and condominiums, offered conveniently in one location. Throughout the project, partners share their hands-on expertise and cleared the path for other one-stop-shops creators to succeed. The partners produced an impressive set of free high-value resources, meant to support, in a very practical way, each organisation wanting to set up a renovation support programme. Their expertise served as the ideal basis for advocating one-stop-shops at regional, national and EU levels. Finally, the Innovate partners see themselves as one-stop-shop enablers. That is why their knowledge is meant to be shared as widely as possible. Online communication as well as various events (online and offline) were used to inform about the Innovate developments, exchange best practices on integrated renovation support programs and bring precious help to others.
INNOVATE specific project objectives and the progress done towards these objectives are summarised here below:
- Energies Demain – an experienced finance expert who has also been supporting French local authorities in ambitious energy renovations programmes – has compiled an “Inventory of best practices for setting up an integrated energy efficiency service package including access to long-term financing to homeowners”. The “Inventory” goes through all the different steps of the customer journey. Each step is illustrated by practical examples which further complement ten detailed case studies.
- All 11 target territories have developed a market gap analysis (MGA) for their target territory. One of the main finding of the MGAs is that the results are very specific for each territory and significant differences may exist between local authorities within the same country. The MGAs then led into the local development plans (LDPs) which actually offer different scenarios of how the integrated energy efficiency service package could function. These were discussed with local decision makers and stakeholders, adapted and fine-tuned, and finally resulted in the pilot business model to be tested in the target territories.
- All 11 target territories have developed and rolled-out integrated energy efficiency service packages. While experienced partners diversified their offer and upgraded their services, the learning partners developed new integrated service packages from the initial study and market gap analysis to the actual launch of the activities. At the end of the project, the 11 target territories have contributed to the renovation of 4795 dwelling units including 464 single family houses and 175 condominiums contributing to 4331 dwellings units. Together, the entire renovations triggered more than 26 M EUR of investments and achieved primary energy savings of 374 GWh/year.
- A set of “policy recommendations on how to boost one-stop-shops for integrated home energy renovation in the EU” for all governance levels (local/regional, national and European) as well as for the private and financial sectors has been compiled. Amongst the overarching conclusions, the report recommends that one-stop shops should focus on the type of renovations that are consistent with the EU's objectives of reaching a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. The findings of the report have been widely promoted especially ahead of the Renovation Wave Communication. Moreover, Energy Cities, the coordinator of the Innovate project, produced a step-by-step guide for local authorities willing to set up a One-Stop-Shop for integrated home energy renovation including 15 recommendations from the Innovate partners and practical case studies.
- A total of 6,273 stakeholders throughout the whole project duration has been reached through communication and dissemination activities. 25 capacity-building workshops and webinars, both at EU and national levels, have been held, reaching almost 1,500 stakeholders that are able to widely replicate the project results. The production of high-quality resources such as the guidebook and case studies were widely disseminated during events and workshops, thus leading to a higher impact of the project. Finally, the media presence of the Innovate project has been important. Innovate partners reported 111 news articles, interviews and social media posts with a regional and national coverage.
