STARDUST serves as smart connector bringing together advanced European cities and citizens of Pamplona (ES), Tampere (FI) and Trento (IT) - with the associated follower cities of Derry (UK), Kozani (GR) and Litomerice (CZ). These six cities, collaborating with relevant industrial partners, including a variety of innovative local SME, and supported by academia and research centres will demonstrate three lighthouse cities, deploy intelligent integration measures, test and validate technical solutions and innovative business models, and deliver blueprints for replication throughout Europe and abroad. The objective of STARDUST project is to pave the way towards the transformation of the carbon supplied cities into Smart, high efficient, intelligent and citizen oriented cities, developing urban technical green solutions and innovative business models, integrating the domains of buildings, mobility and efficient energy through ICT, testing and validating these solutions, enabling their fast roll out in the market . The core idea of the STARDUST project is the demonstration of different “innovation islands” as urban incubators of technological, social, regulatory and market solutions which, once validated, could contribute to this objective of transformation of our cities towards Smart Cities. The integrated approach of STARDUST is based in the combination of technological solutions with human being reflected in joint decision making, economic constraints, citizen’s governance, etc. The STARDUST Smart City concept has been designed to enhance the integration of all these aspects to define a new Urban Metabolism.

The RED, the EED and the EPBD (recast) require member states to develop ambitious policies for sustainable heating and cooling. The objective of this project is to assist policy makers at the local, regional, national and EU-level in developing and implementing integrated, effective and efficient policy strategies achieving a fast and strong penetration of RES and EE in heating and cooling. This will include the analysis of cross-sectoral effects between RES and EE measures in industry, buildings and DHC as well as the link to the electricity system. The core part of the proposal is the communication and capacity building process with policy makers, administrative staff and other stakeholders at the local, regional and national level including the set up of policy group meetings, expert consultations, experience sharing and capacity building workshops as well as webinars. The process will focus on 6 target countries and regions. Together with the authorities heating and cooling strategies will be developed through a profound analysis of their specific situation including barriers & drivers and a model based assessment of policy intervention in scenarios up to 2050. progRESsHEAT will assist national policy makers in implementing the policies published in the national heating and cooling plans in an effective and efficient way by the means of a model-based quantitative impact assessment of local, regional and national policies up to 2050. Data, scenarios and recommendations will be provided for the target countries. Dissemination activities will transfer results to other countries and the EU-level. Policy makers and other stakeholders will be strongly involved in the process, learn from the experience in other regions and gain deep understanding of the impact of policy instruments and their specific design. This will provide the ground for favourable, stable conditions for increasing the efficiency and the penetration of renewable heating and cooling in Europe.

INNOVATE will overcome market barriers to deep energy-efficient retrofits of private housing stock by developing and rolling out integrated energy efficiency (EE) service packages targeting homeowners in 11 target territories from 10 EU Member States (NL, DK, BE, LV, CZ, CY, SE, IT, ES and UK). An integrated EE service package includes: • Development of products adapted to consumers’ concerns • Marketing & communication • Independent advice and technical assistance. • Tailor-made financial advice • Coordination of a chain of suppliers / contractors • Ensuring high quality standards • Long-term and affordable financing The packages, developed by local and regional authorities and/or private sector stakeholders, in cooperation with financing institutions and investors, will be tested on 117 pilot buildings, aiming at min. 50% energy savings. These pilot projects are expected to mobilise 37.41 MEUR of private investments, trigger primary energy savings of 5.38 GWh/year and 3.14 GWh/year of renewable energy production. INNOVATE will widely disseminate successful business models and innovative financing schemes tested by project partners and those identified thanks to an extensive analysis of enabling conditions and EU best practices. 4,000 stakeholders and potential replicators will be reached via 61 EU and national capacity building events, policy meetings and communication/media tools. Recommendations on how to remove legal, financial, technical and organisational barriers hindering the implementation of the packages in target territories will influence 12 EU, national and regional policies in order to ensure the viability of these packages.

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy (RE) sources requires motivating consumers to change their consumption habits so as to balance demand with a volatile energy supply and to accept new technologies like smart meters. Consumer co-ownership in RE – “Citizen Energy” – has proved successful in engaging consumers in financing RES, thus becoming “prosumers” which in turn induced positive behavioural changes in energy consumption. “Prosumer” models, however, are still not widely implemented across Europe. Guaranteed feed-in tariffs have facilitated the repayment of RE installation loans, but now a shift to auction systems favouring large-scale projects threatens this powerful incentive to citizens' investment. Moreover, the typical “prosumer” is male, middle aged and with a higher in-come whereas the participation of women and social groups vulnerable to fuel poverty is uncommon. The rebound effect and insufficient use of ICT solutions are additional problems. SCORE • Facilitates consumers to become prosumers of RE, firstly in three pilot regions in Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic, secondly in cities across Europe following the pilot projects. It applies Consumer Stock Ownership Plans (CSOPs) utilising established best practice up-dated by inclusive financing techniques and combined with energy efficiency measures. • Activates local authorities and consumers demonstrating the positive impact co-ownership has on consumer behaviour. It shows the ability of this democratic participation model to include women as well as low-income households, in particular unemployed. • Empowers consumers and municipalities in a capacity-building program through the launch of an interactive online “RE Prosumer Investment Calculator” and seminars in the five partner countries (DE, IT, BG, PL, CZ). • Formulates policy recommendations to promote prosumership and to remove barriers for consumers to become active market players at the EU and national levels.