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ENERGY EFFICIENCY SUBSCRIPTION FOR DEEP RENOVATION WITH PERFORMANCE GUARANTEE

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EUROPA (ENERGY EFFICIENCY SUBSCRIPTION FOR DEEP RENOVATION WITH PERFORMANCE GUARANTEE)

Reporting period: 2020-10-01 to 2022-03-31

Renovating both public and private buildings is an essential action and to pursue this objective, in 2020 the Commission published the strategy "A Renovation Wave for Europe – Greening our buildings, creating jobs, improving lives" to boost renovation in the EU. It aims to double annual energy renovation rates in the next 10 years. As well as reducing emissions, these renovations will enhance quality of life for people living in and using the buildings, and should create many additional green jobs in the construction sector.
Europa project sets its actions in this context, boosting the capacity of five pilot regions to promote energy efficiency investments in the residential building sector.
The action has four specific objectives. On one hand, the project aims at defining common rules, approaches and methods in the promotion of energy efficiency in the residential building sector. On the other hand the project will trigger about 37 M€ of investment in all of the involved regions. Besides, the project will transfer knowledge to other European organizations (public authorities, energy agencies and private companies), by implementing a mentoring program. All these objectives will be fed by a mutual learning activity boosting the capacity and skills of the consortium toward a common understanding of the issues and sharing experience and knowledge.
The project is intended to define a common set of standards and requirements for the deep energy renovation (the so-called Energy Efficiency Subscription). It includes technical requirements and financial options. Although set on a common framework, the energy efficiency subscription is tailored on the basis of the regional peculiarities and national legislative framework. Its promotion and implementation is carried out through the management of One-Stop-Shop activities, set up in each pilot region. Partners are engaging relevant stakeholders (Associations of Condominium managers, construction companies, professional orders, social house managers, etc..) in order to activate demand and support the Energy Efficiency Subscription.
During this first period, the Consortium worked jointly to set up the conditions that will allow it to achieve the expected outputs and, despite the COVID outbreak and several unexpected hurdles, it is proceeding as planned. The definition of a common set of standards and requirements in order to build trust and transparency and guarantee energy savings from the deep energy renovation (the so-called Energy Efficiency Subscription - EES) was finalized in June 2021. Within the same task, some annexes were produced to complete the EES general structure: Requirements and specifications grid, Requirement and specification checklist, EPC_ General Terms and Conditions, EPC_ Specification Conditions.
Those documents are provided as reference, as they need to be adapted to the national/regional context and the envisaged investment carried out. Finally, the EES is coupled with a financial simulation tool which enables to define the conditions under which the investments can be considered sustainable from a financial point of view.
All the standards and requirements foreseen in the common scheme of EES have been then adapted by the regional PPs according to regional/national legal, technical and economic framework. The adaptation was anticipated by a stakeholders consultation process. In general, all the feedback were positive, however market operators highlighted a set of issues and bottlenecks actually present that could jeopardise the successful implementation of the project as it was presented:
-Increase of energy costs and construction materials
-Delays in the supply chain (lack of scaffoldings, window frames, etc.)
-Complicated procedures for accessing grants and incentives
-High volatility of the market that bring the postponement of decisions
-An unstable framework for what concerns incentives, regulation that affects access to finance
-Cases of over demanding that prevent companies from investing in quality to open up new investment opportunities.
According to these conditions, a flexible approach is required for the concrete implementation of the EES at regional level. Partners started to promote it by engaging their relevant territorial stakeholders (Associations of Condominium managers, construction companies, professional orders, social house managers, etc..). In the meanwhile, all pilot regions have launched and promoted with a communication campaign their newly opened One-Stop-Shop (OSS), which will support all stakeholders in the deep renovation process of residential buildings. The internal knowledge of the Consortium is increasing thanks to the organisation of six mutual learning workshops on relevant topics held by expert partners. The mutual learning process helps the consortium to share ideas, explore innovative ways to implement project activities.
Moreover, the knowledge transfer of the experiences made by the EUROPA project to other European institutions is considered fundamental to widespread project impact. For this reason, a particular effort was made in organising a Call for a mentoring Program. The commitment was rewarded as the results went over the expectations and 30 mentees coming from 8 EU Countries were admitted to the mentoring program. An exhaustive, multimedial training package was set up to feed the mentees learning needs and support the already ongoing online sessions and the foreseen site visit at respective mentor’s location. All project activities were accompanied by an incisive and wide communication campaign and dissemination of the EUROPA project approach, outcomes and results through the website, social networks, videos, information materials such as leaflets and brochures and the networking activity.
The project is already generating impacts in line with the planned activities. Most of the tangible results are for what concerns stakeholders engagements. A total of 62 meetings have been organised for the purposes. 18 have been organised with end-users (social house companies, condominium managers) with a total number of 245 people. 28 meetings with market operators with 155 stakeholders involved and 16 meetings with financial institutions with the involvement of 20 entities. So far, 420 stakeholders have been involved. Due to COVID restrictions, most of the meetings have been organised online and several as bilateral meetings. This activity was useful to define, on one hand, of the 5 Energy Efficiency Subscriptions schemes, which can be considered as new methods that can be applied in the market and, on the other hand, to the setting up of the OSSs. Indeed, all five regional partners launched the OSS, campaigning it with media coverage. The website includes relevant information about each OSS and the consultation service provided by them is in the implementation phase. The year to come will be crucial for triggering the investments and achieving the project impact. In fact, energy savings, investments and renewable energy installations will be the consequence of the renovation of buildings with the support of the OSS. Finally the engagement of 30 organizations willing to set up one stop shops across Europe (instead of the 20 planned) for the mentoring program is also important, as it creates a network that will be further exploited for replication, exchange and communication purposes.
Example of social house renovation