40% of all energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the European Union arise in private and public buildings. Thus, major advancements have to be made in this sector to reach the EU’s climate and energy targets. Energy-efficient buildings will also contribute to the vision of secure, affordable and climate-friendly energy for citizens and businesses as well as generating additional societal, environmental and economic benefits. To strengthen policies that promote retrofitting and modernizing existing buildings, the EU has adopted the Directive 2012/27/EU on Energy Efficiency (EED). It requires EU Member States and candidate countries to establish a long-term strategy for mobilizing investment in the renovation of the national building by 30 April 2014, and every 3 years thereafter. These action plans are an integral part of a country’s National Energy Efficiency Action Plans. As of May 2015, 27 EU Member States have adhered to the requirement of Article 4, EED, and submitted their national building renovation strategy, albeit most did not meet the April deadline and some submitted their strategies as late as March 2015. However, the requirements to prepare these renovation strategies appear to have overburdened most EU member states. According to an analysis conducted by the Buildings Performance Institute Europe, only five countries have at least adequately complied with the five core elements described in Article 4 of the EED. To date, no renovation strategy has been submitted that can count as a ‘best practice’ and provide orientation for other countries. The project EmBuild (Empower public authorities to establish a long-term strategy for mobilizing investment in the energy efficient renovation of the building stock) is designed to empower public authorities at local, regional and national level, to formulate renovation strategies for the building sector that foster deep renovation and facilitate the acceleration of the renovation.

A project proposed by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in cooperation with the Climate Protection and Energy Agency of Baden-Württemberg/Germany and European competence centres on Energy Performance Contracting (EnPC) in Croatia, Greece and Slovenia, a competence centre for e-learning in Slovakia, and key actors for the promotion of EnPC at the local level in Latvia, Serbia, Romania and Ukraine. Objective of EnPC-INTRANS is to increase the market uptake of technologies for the improvement of energy efficiency (EE) in public buildings and services by means of fostering private sector participation in innovative financing schemes for EE investments. This will be achieved by means of implementing large-scale capacity building for local public authorities and SMEs to jointly set-up and use adapted EnPC models for EE services (topic 3 in the scope of the EE21 call). European best practices in EnPC are adapted to local conditions (WP2) and presented to relevant target groups in the partner countries (WP3). Training needs of local public authorities and SMEs are assessed in intensive stakeholder dialogue, providing the basis for design and implementation of efficient training concepts and tools making use of advanced on-line technologies for European-wide capacity development (WP3). Trainers are trained throughout the partners’ networks (WP4) and the developed training concepts and tools are demonstrated in national and international cooperation seminars (WP5). The achieved impact of large-scale capacity development on the European market for EnPC projects is continuously monitored and evaluated (WP6), and the project results are disseminated to all EU28 member states (WP7). At least 50 trained trainers and 3,000 trained experts will directly benefit from the project and cater for the initiation and development of EnPC projects in partner countries and beyond, providing for energy savings of more than 60 GWh per year when implemented. (The lead Partner) GIZ has been commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) with the implementation of the project ‘Energy Efficiency in Municipalities’ in the Ukraine. The EC through this Horizon 2020 project thus contributes complementarily to achieving the overall objectives of the BMZ-funded project as the BMZ-funded project supports the implementation of the EU Horizon project. None of the activities covered by this work programme are funded by any other funding.