The ProRetro project aims to - Overcome barriers to residential building refurbishment by offering new one-stop-shop services to customers in five German cities/regions - base the one-stop-shop design on the needs of customers so that - they are attractive to customers, - conceptualise, plan, implement and monitor and evaluate the new one-stop-shops - prepare their continuation beyond the project lifetime - cover the whole customer journey of a building renovation from audit/advice, planning, contracting, implementation and monitoring and approval – and involve respective stakeholders/experts in the service offer - build on information and experiences in designing and implementing one-stop shops from best practice examples in other European countries and establish peer-learning structures with those organisations

The ultimate goal of the REFINE-project is to contribute to the supply of sufficient and attractive financing sources to energy efficiency investments through enhancement of refinancing schemes which are understood as important amplifier for market growth. Refinancing is an approach where an EES provider sells and a refinancing institution acquires receivables to be paid by an EES client. The project activities focus on the enhancement of refinanceability of energy efficiency projects, consisting of the following elements: Ensuring admissibility of refinancing schemes for energy efficiency projects; reducing transaction cost of refinancing schemes through standardisation; and facilitating risk assessment through increased transparency and use of credit guarantees. Based on the assessment of existing good practice examples, generic refinancing schemes are derived and supporting tools are developed, such as standardised contract stipulations and a rating system. The enlarged use of refinancing schemes in the energy efficiency business is stimulated by awareness raising among all relevant target groups and by capacity building improving know-how on practical implementation of refinancing schemes. The consortium covers 11 countries focussing on South and Eastern Europe since energy efficiency projects in these countries suffer most from financing barriers. The project applies a collaborative approach to all its project activities bringing together financial institutions, EES providers and facilitators.

NOVICE will develop and demonstrate a new business model in building renovation to better monetize energy efficiency by consolidating services and subsequent revenue streams from both energy savings and demand response. In order to do so NOVICE introduces new actors (aggregators) in building energy upgrade projects and fosters their collaboration with ESCOs, financing institutions, facilities management companies, engineering consultants to facilitate the roll out of the dual (grid services and energy efficiency) energy services model. The main business bond to be forged between ESCOs and Aggregators through NOVICE will allow their seamless collaboration in exploiting economies of scope and scale along with risk sharing on implementing building energy renovations. That business relationship will take the form of a MoU and will result in the composition of a new enhanced EPC template that can deliver the successful deployment of the dual energy services scheme in building renovation. The enhanced EPC template and the overall dual energy services scheme will be scrutinized by a financing institution to assess its bankability and identify the appropriate financing mechanisms for initiating and rolling out investments under that scheme. NOVICE throughout its duration targets to trigger the initiation of more than 20.8 m EUR of investments in building renovation based on the dual energy services model that will result in primary energy savings of more than 25.2 GWh/year. To achieve that target NOVICE brings together a highly experienced consortium that consists of stakeholders from the entire value chain (research institutions, technology vendors, engineering consultants and facilitators, Aggregators, ESCOs, Financing institutions, Facilities Management companies) of building renovation. Strong participation of SMEs (6 out 9 partners) demonstrate the commercial exploitation potential of the NOVICE outputs and supports the successful rollout of the NOVICE business model.

The estimated average gap between calculated and actual energy performance of the European building stock is 25% for energy performance and 1,5% for comfort performance (as scored by building occupants). Comprehensive research has shown that faultily commissioned and operated building management systems are a main cause for this gap mainly caused by the lack of appropriate and coherent quality management systems for building performance. The objective of this project is therefore to develop and demonstrate pragmatic services and appropriate tools supporting quality management in the design, construction, commissioning and operation phase as a means to close this gap in European buildings. The project will integrate different innovative ICT-driven tools supporting the quality management process into building and energy services, and will apply them to a representative set of European buildings (taking into account different climate zones and different energy services). The result of this project will be a comprehensive QUANTUM quality management platform integrating tools, services and processes. The partners will implement EU-wide dissemination activities to inform the stakeholders about the advantages of comprehensive quality management systems for the building industry, and to promote the tools validated in the project. Stakeholders that will benefit from the results of this project include building owners, tenants, ESCOs, developers, architects, engineering and consulting firms, students and public authorities. Aside from savings on the energy costs CO2 emissions will be reduced and employee productivity in buildings equipped with the tools and services will increase as well due to increased occupant comfort. From previous preliminary data and own estimations, the QUANTUM partners expect that the reduction in energy consumption achieved by coherent quality management for building performance to be more than 10%.

ABC 21: Africa-Europe BioClimatic buildings for the XXI century