The project aims at facilitating the dialogue between Italian public and private key actors on financing issues related to energy efficiency in the existing and new buildings sector and fostering collaboration, innovation and action through the establishment of a permanent national roundtable and connected events at local level. The project will set up a national roundtable with selected high level stakeholders in order to allow an in-depth discussion about current barriers and market failures, as well as share best practice and innovative financing solutions, with the goal to improve stakeholders’ awareness and knowledge and to identify the necessary political and regulatory framework. In parallel, local events and initiatives will be organized to engage as many stakeholders as possible, enabling capacity building, dissemination, replication activities and scale up of “success stories”: local actors are one of the main drivers of the energy transition and they bring forward tremendous opportunities for investment and innovation in a number of fields. National roundtables and local events will be organised in order to trigger a continuous and mutually reinforcing virtuous circle. The combination of a top-down and bottom-up approach will create the conditions for the development of tailor made support tools and instruments for the different stakeholders involved. The outcomes of the national roundtables and the local events will be analysed, and a roadmap for PAs and industry sector including strategic and operative recommendations for the implementation of financial instruments will be elaborated. Connections with past and current similar initiatives at EU level will be pursued throughout the project, in order to keep the national outputs in line with EU requirements and the provisions put in place to face the ongoing global situation. Finally, different strategies to maintain the roundtables as a permanent forum after the end of the project will be proposed.

FlexGeo aims to develop innovative geothermal energy system designs for maximized systems performance and flexibility. Pathing the way for the market entry of commercial modular reversible ORC systems will be, together with advanced smart control strategies and operational tools, the backbone of our concept. The proposed key-innovations will make geothermal systems more flexible, more efficient, more economically viable and adaptable for an implementation and market update across Europe and beyond. A modular rev. 200 kWel ORC unit with advanced control strategies and operational tool will be installed and demonstrated at a real district heating system at the TUM Campus in Garching, Germany. The first-time demonstration of this innovative technology on a TRL 7 level will directly path the way to its market entry after the project, since due to the attractive modular approach, the demonstrator already has the same capacity as the future commercial product. Furthermore, innovative geothermal system designs considering high- and low-temperature Underground Thermal Energy Storage (UTES) systems, advanced closed-loop systems (AGS) and enhanced flexibility of district heating (DH) and district cooling (DC) networks (DHCN), are pathing the way to a broad spread of the FlexGeo solutions across Europe and the world, resulting in largescale CO2 emission reductions.