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".

The main objective of the VET4GSEB project is to transfer the experience and good practices in the field of VET from the EU countries to 4 third countries participating in the project. It intends to provide the national VET providers with adapted solutions, training materials, case studies, tools and guidelines, which will allow them to update their training practices and programs in order to meet the skills needs of the labour market in the building and RES sector. The objective will be reached by a series of activities using an innovative approach: trainers from VET providers from all participating countries will be provided with comprehensive information through an on-line networking Platform including:•Database of companies from the building and RES sector from all partners to update the information on the needs of the labour market in different countries;•Database of innovative training methods and tools, digital technologies implemented in the energy systems in smart buildings, innovative technical solutions for the application of PV systems in buildings; •Training materials on 5 modules and a Guidebook for the VET trainers.The partners from Bulgaria and Turkey, owing extensive experience in VET regarding new training methods, soft skills, smart electrical installations and PV systems in buildings, incl. the necessary digital skills for them, will create training materials in order to transfer their knowledge to the participants from third countries not associated to the Programme: Albania, Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine, through the networking Platform.Trainings for VET providers from all participating countries will be performed in 2 phases: 1 pilot training in English for 18 trainers and 6 national trainings for 10 trainers each - in national languages.The expected results are 78 up-skilled VET providers who will improve their training practices and deliver updated training, adapted to the new needs of the market for electricians from the RES s