Renovation and refurbishment of existing building – to improve their accessibility and security, reduce energy consumption, and preserve cultural heritage – is becoming increasingly important, especially in urban areas. Some renovation services are too costly for home owners to consider. The EU-funded HIROSS4all project will develop and implement the Opengela one-stop-shop renovation service in the Basque Country (Spain). Coordinated by the Direction of Regional Planning, Urbanism and Urban Regeneration of the Basque Government, it will rely on citizen engagement and the development of an innovative financial instrument to make the service suitable for vulnerable population. The project will focus on energy efficient building renovations with improved accessibility and security, minimising logistical, financial, administrative and legal burdens. Two pilots will be implemented in the Otxarkoaga (Bilbao) and Txonta (Eibar) districts, to be upscaled in the Basque Country and replicated at EU level.
The main objective of HIROSS4all project has been to develop an economically viable, scalable and replicable integrated home renovation service (IHRS) for private residential buildings in the Basque Country. Specifically:
-Foster energy efficiency building upgrades, with a focus on vulnerable districts, where citizens live in or on the verge of energy poverty.
-Minimize logistical, financial, administrative and legal burdens caused by a complex and multi‐stakeholder home renovation process. This is will be accomplished by adapting an innovative financing tool to ease the access to financing to homeowners, including vulnerable groups. District offices will ensure that home renovation process is made easier, and homeowners will receive support at all steps of the process.
-Ensure that building retrofits consider the social dimension by incorporating security, comfort, and improved accessibility for Basque citizens to further improve the quality of life of vulnerable population.
-Design a scalable operating model to the district offices, based on the coordination of the Basque Government, and ensure the replicability of the one‐stop‐shop service, at both the Basque Country and the EU‐level.
-Create strong and reliable public‐private partnerships for the provision of the service. Identify and overcome regional‐local collaboration barriers inherent to home renovation services.
-Increase homeowner and regional partner awareness of the multiple benefits of energy efficiency, including health, wellbeing, comfort, job creation and energy poverty alleviation.
The Opengela service, developed and piloted in HIROSS4all, has reduced the burden to non-professional homeowners for their home renovation. The pilot leaders (VVMM and DEBEGESA), with the support of other HIROSS4all partners, have held several meetings and presentations with communities of neighbours and individual homewoners in the Opengela offices. The Opengela service users have shown that they are satisfied with the model. There has been a big participation, with neighbours accessing the offices and then coming back for further meetings. The district office scheme has proved useful for the renovation of private multi-family housing.
