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TURNKEY solution for home RETROFITting

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TURNKEY RETROFIT (TURNKEY solution for home RETROFITting)

Reporting period: 2020-12-01 to 2022-02-28

Europe is facing challenges to triple the current renovation rate in order to meet its climate and energy goals, mitigate climate change and get on track to limit global temperature increase.
Tackling this challenge would not only be beneficial for the climate, but first and foremost for the people living, working and using these buildings: inadequate and poor housing causes high energy bills, health issues and a lower quality of life.

Renovating the existing building stock represents an exceptional investment opportunity, with the capacity to boost the economy and generate local jobs. The energy renovation market plays an important role in the economy, amounting to a value of €109 billion and generating 882,900 jobs in Europe (2015) and its potential is far greater
For homeowners and building managers, the renovation process can seem complicated, shaped by the ambiguity of the interventions to implement, a lack of knowledge on the existing solutions as well as a lack of services to coordinate all required market actors involved in the renovation process. This often results in lengthy, time-consuming and disruptive renovation processes.

To tackle these challenges, Turnkey Retrofit (TR) developed an integrated home renovation service, leveraging on the business operations of the project partners (4000 integrated building renovations conducted to date). A burden-free experience for homeowners, this holistic service allows to manage and upgrade their homes in a simpler and cost-effective way. It matches end-users with the right building professionals and financial options, while assembling the local capacity for deep energy renovations. The service is accessible through a user-friendly digital platform, Solutions4Renovation (S4R), and addresses drivers of building renovation that go beyond a desire to reduce energy bills and increase asset value, such as home improvement, increased comfort, enhanced health & quality of life.

9 partners (from research, consultancy, engineering companies, non-profit organisations, technology centres) joined their forces to develop the concept in 3 EU countries: France, Ireland and the Spain. TR identified and established ad-hoc mechanisms and a specific new business plan for the target countries.
The project covers both detached and semi-detached single-family and multi-family residential housing. TR main market is the private residential sector, however the service could easily be adapted as well for social housing and local authorities, offering a great development and growth potential.
The TR project was launched to developed an integrated renovation service that offers a homeowner-oriented renovation journey, with the aim to transform the complex and fragmented renovation process into a simpler, more straightforward and an overall more attractive process for the homeowner. The service is now accessible through a user-friendly digital platform, S4R. Based on the successful French renovation services of Operene and Heero, project partners developed technical solutions in order to design an effective digital homeowner-oriented renovation service, and replicated them in Spain and Ireland. The main goal was to pave the way for better integrated renovation services in all three countries. The S4R platform hosts all customer services, however, some aspects have been adapted to each country, such as (i) language, (ii) choices offered, and (iii) graphic identity. This was essential as the project aims to catch people who are interested or are already planning to carry out (deep) energy renovations and to involve them in the renovation journey thanks to improved digital solutions. Two main software tools were developed:
1) Punch Diag
The tool aims to assess the building state of degradation and the perceived comfort levels. The Punch Diag offers a first indication of the building’s performance levels, as well as cost savings and comfort improvements.
2) Roadmap
The tool aims to support the homeowner in planning renovation works in a way that avoid hassles and an optimal outcome. It allows the homeowner:
- to see different renovation scenarios
- to show global retrofit solutions with different levels of performance
- to adapt the suggested renovation scenarios or build his/her own
- to plan retrofit actions in a timeline that adapts to his or her constraints
- For each renovation solution, to give the estimated energy performance reached (on EPC scale), cost and the available grants

During the project timeline, the following additional results have been achieved:
• Preparation of a guide for the implementation of the integrated OSS retrofit service in other European countries, identifying steps to follow for the implementation, barriers to overcome, and lessons learned from the whole adaptation and implementation process.
• Development of an adaptable process and impact evaluation strategy to evaluate the quality of the customer journey for retrofit services.
• Development of an attractive, easy to use project website which reached over 6000 users over the course of the project.
• Development of a communication and dissemination strategy that goes beyond the project timeline and ensure the project’s sustainability , in particular with the creation of a stakeholder community (with around 100 members on LinkedIn and more than 300 followers on Twitter).
• Organisation of the final conference which gathered more than 100 stakeholders throughout Europe; as well as other national workshops and webinars in collaboration with other H2020 projects and initiatives.
The S4R platform provides first-level general information for customers interested in building retrofit but requires further work to provide a fully integrated OSS retrofit service. The following conclusions can be drawn:
- Developing interactive tools requires thinking about the full process, and no step can be omitted;
- Brainstorming about the target, the needs, and the frame of the tool at the early stages of the project is essential;
- Involving local partners to discuss each step and build the desired user journey was key;
- Carrying out a feasibility study and checking available data;
- While certain elements of a fully integrated OSS retrofit service can be digitalised, each service needs to be adapted to meet the requirements of the local area/region/country to offer an impactful integrated energy efficient renovation service.
- Thinking about design, and making sure the platform is ergonomic;
- Checking the relevance of the results, correcting any potential bugs.

Within the project, the role of national and local regulations, incentives and financial barriers to home renovation have been analysed and will support the streamlining of standards and practices when replicating to other EU countries beyond the end of the project.

TR targets the development of a 335 M€ investment pipeline for home renovation, corresponding to 96 GWh/year of primary energy savings triggered and 73 896 tCO2-eq/year reduction of greenhouse gases emissions and approximately 14 700 dwellings renovated within the first 5 years of the service beyond the end of the project. In addition to the above impacts, TR also intends to generate a substantial impact on market stakeholders (professionals) with increased skills / capability / competencies on energy issues through the creation of the TR market actors’ community and their involvement in the integrated service.
Home Page of Solutions4Renovation platform