Many citizens, particularly in nascent green building markets, make suboptimal decisions in the design and construction choices for renovation approaches and new home purchases due to a fear of bank financing. Borrowing sufficiently to bring forward necessary resources to build homes properly both reduces citizens’ “Total Cost of Monthly Ownership” (loan payment plus energy, health and repair costs) while unlocking a critical increase of construction budgets facilitating ownership of the greenest, high-quality homes. Financing Green Homes with the borrower subject to lower monthly operating costs is less risky to banks which provide discounted credit without harming profits. The SMARTER project effectively communicates the benefits of Green Homes to citizens and other key stakeholders to bring a systemic solution to a systemic problem that inhibits the financial industry to design and offer green finance products and the citizens to understand and request them. SMARTER replicates a successful “Green Homes and Green Mortgage” program to 12 new countries, addresses barriers and brings green innovation with relevant research and cluster formation, adapts essential tools for administration and communication, and effectively expands collection of actual energy and financial performance to improve risk analysis with local data. Public investment is leveraged and ambitious green EU targets are supported as banks, developers, and green solution providers all contribute budgets to increase private financing for building exemplary homes. The SMARTER “Green Homes Investment Platform” guides new programs to a suitably ambitious, common definition of green investments and facilitates institutional investment by collaborating with ongoing initiatives including EeMAP and EEFIG; aligning with EC objectives such as “Mainstreaming Energy Efficiency Finance” and advancing the Financial, Technical and Behavioral de-risking championed by “Smart Finance for Smart Buildings".

With over 80 million inefficient heating & cooling (HC) systems still installed across Europe motivating consumers to replace those units with more efficient, greener alternatives will be key for a decarbonised Energy Union fuelled by renewable energy. REPLACE therefore aims to improve coordination in local networks to implement replacement campaigns in ten target regions by means of action plans fortified with policy and business-related improvements. Based on lessons learnt from previous projects and sound on-the-ground research on stakeholders’ mind-sets, local working groups (LWGs) will connect all key actors in each region – local governments, consumer associations, developers, energy utilities and professional associations – to steer the direction of a wide range of replacement activities. For the first time, REPLACE will explicitly unite intermediaries, such as chimney sweepers or installers, who have constant access to consumers, and policy makers to develop common activities with maximum impact. REPLACE supports the LWGs by providing a communication framework and a rich toolbox of online and offline actions targeted to the needs of all relevant stakeholders. The “REPLACE Your Heating System Calculator” will be central in raising consumers’ and investors’ awareness of the monetary and wider benefits of HC replacements and develop real momentum towards collective actions. By making all materials openly accessible and highlighting success stories the uptake of activities can be multiplied beyond target regions. In addition, all activities will be firmly established within local policy programmes to ensure that the overall impact of REPLACE is sustainable and the networks forged during the action will continue beyond project life. Together with a dedicated focus on capacity-building measures and knowledge transfer REPLACE identifies and merges all elements necessary to successfully make heating and cooling for European consumers efficient and climate-friendly.

The countries in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region and in the former Soviet Union republics (CIS region) have the most energy-poor people in Europe. Main reasons contributing to energy poverty for people with low income are due to high energy prices and poor energy efficiency of the buildings, building heating systems and household appliances. The ComAct project is focusing on these regions and in particular on their specificity that the housing stock (characterised with large percentage of multi-family apartment blocks) is predominantly in private ownership and consequently energy-poor households live in their privately-owned apartments. To address the complex roots of energy poverty, there is a need to develop a new approach in order to influence the energy costs substantially and make the energy efficiency (EE) interventions affordable, and consequently reduce the high energy poverty level in the CEE and CIS region. The ComAct project aims to make high-impact/high-cost energy-efficient improvements in multi-family apartment buildings in the CEE and CIS regions affordable and manageable for energy-poor communities as well as to create the necessary assistance conditions for lifting them out of energy poverty. To achieve this main goal, firstly, an approach to identification and selection of energy-poor communities is developed, followed by interventions in three main dimensions: 1) empowering and activating the communities of homeowners’ associations; 2) developing/adapting financial tools that provide financing for low income families; and 3) optimising technical solutions that provide most favourable cost-benefit ratio for the energy efficient improvements at a multi-family apartment building level. In order to demonstrate applicability, benefits and potential for alleviating energy poverty, 5 pilot cases take place in Hungary, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Lithuania and Ukraine.