Energy poverty is a condition in which households cannot afford to be kept adequately warm at reasonable cost, given the income. It is becoming one of the key policy topics throughout the EU, but the region most affected by energy poverty is the area of South-East Europe - new member states as well as accession states. The energy costs are expected to further increase in the future, due to the fossil fuels depletion and taxation of greenhouses gases emissions directly contributing to climate change. A change in energy consumption habits is required across all social groups but is the most pressing in groups affected by energy poverty or endangered by it. Therefore the project Innovative Direction in Energy Advising (abbreviation: IDEA) purpose was to develop innovations in education about energy poverty. In the course of the project implementation, the most important objective achieved was to improve existing and develop new innovative educational methods and materials for adult training on energy poverty. For this reason, within this project, curriculum for training was developed, enabling the trainees to act as energy advisors to the energy poor thereby increasing their housing quality, improving indoor environment and decreasing energy bills. The innovative educational tools developed, allow for high quality learning outcomes. The number of stakeholders providing training on energy poverty will be increased by their use. An international network of organizations and individuals involved in energy poverty education was created and will be sustained. The partnership consisted of experienced organizations strategically placed in the most affected region - in Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia and Cyprus. The partner organizations acted as information hubs in their own respective states and also to the neighboring states where energy poverty also presents a heavy burden. Within the project duration, the partner organizations' skills was increased by participating in intellectual outputs development and in the joint staff training event which supported them in further dissemination, through multiplier and dissemination public events and by using the ICT dissemination tools (web pages, social networks, webinars), thereby sharing the gained knowledge and acquired skills with organizations and individuals active in the area of energy poverty. Much more than the 5000 expected individuals (at project application stage) were reached by the project activities. The following intellectual outputs were delivered: overview of already existing materials and training needs assessment; educational program and best practice exchange through mobility; energy poverty educational tools; and educational dissemination tools. For each of the intellectual outputs one of the partners was the leading organization, with other partners contributing to the content. Only after one intellectual output had been delivered, activities on the next output would commence. To ensure a high quality of the delivered outputs, a quality assurance plan was devised in the beginning of the project implementation, followed by 4 six-monthly quality reports. Four transnational meetings were organised with virtual on-line meetings in between physical meetings. The results achieved by the project implementation are: - Report covering all partner countries on the state of the art of existing methods and practices in terms of education about energy poverty and the training needs in this subject, accompanied by a database of stakeholders - Educational programme with a curriculum for adult education about energy poverty - Set of innovative educational materials and ICT tools - Guide to accompany the curriculum and to help interested stakeholders to implement it, complemented by video tutorials for each tool and an overview webinar in each country - Website to allow access to all the educational materials and guidance - On-line platform (facebook group) to allow exchanges and sharing of practices between stakeholders active or interested in the adult education on energy poverty The listed results are expected to contribute to the following long term benefits: - Reinforce adult skills and competencies in the field of energy poverty and energy advising - Solving the issue of energy poverty and simultaneously addressing the issue of climate change - Raising awareness of European citizens on the rising issue of energy poverty - Help the unemployed to identify energy advising as an opportunity for them to find job opportunities

The DOMINO project will nudge more than 3,400 households from the regions of Brussels, Berlin and Naples towards more energy efficient behaviour and will connect participating households in their region to nurture peer-learning and strengthen social bonds. To this end, a variety of behavioural interventions will be combined in a smart plug challenge. In this challenge, households in each region form teams that will be provided with smart plug equipment and a smartphone app allowing them to monitor and control their electricity consumption and serving as a means to directly communicate with them and support them with tailored energy conservation advice. By combining feedback, prompts, goal setting, peer comparison, rewards and other behavioural levers, the project will lead to an annual reduction in primary energy consumption of more than 14.48 GWh. Throughout the project, data will be generated that allows looking into energy consumption patterns of households and their appliances. Furthermore, the actual potential for energy savings through behavioural change as well as through the application of smart plug technology and similar innovative product-system-services can be monitored and evaluated very precisely. The project will thereby not only contribute to reducing energy consumption in the three target region and to improving the awareness for the innovative smart plug technology but will also advance the scientific and public debate on energy consumption behaviour and on behavioural interventions for energy efficiency. In addition to creating direct energy savings and to building knowledge, the project will also contribute to building capacities and skills among participating households, multipliers in energy agencies across Europe, policy-makers on national and European level as well as municipalities and energy providers. At the end of the project, smart plugs will be passed on to organsiations who will keep lending them to interested to consumers.

There is an untapped potential for private investments in energy efficiency, especially in the residential private sector, due to non-technical barriers. Some EU countries have more developed markets and have shown significant good practices (ie. France), while others are lacking behind, especially in Central East Europe (energy service markets still sub-optimal but great opportunities for ambitious investments in deep refurbishment) and in South Europe (where energy consumption for heating in the housing sector is lower than it is in the North, making deep refurbishment investments based on EU policies less beneficiary). PadovaFIT EXPANDED starts from the recent experience of the IEE-funded PadovaFIT project (lead by CPD with SOGESCA as technical partner), focused on the the energy refurbishment of condominiums in the Padova metropolitan area, via an ESCO (selected with a public tender) and the use of standardized EPCs. The project builds on the experience (good and bad) generated in the Padova area (engagement actions, trained condominium facilitators, market players involvement, template contracts to be improved, financing products to be better elaborated) and aims at planning, creating and piloting a one-stop-shop dedicated to private residential buildings with an improved and financially sustainable business model, result of specific mapping of needs and SWOT analysis. The project aims at expanding the business model to the metropolitan area of Timisoara (RO) who will will adapt the model to the Romanian conditions, launching and piloting a one-stop-shop as well. The Bulgarian Energy Agency of Plovdiv will support the metropolitan areas of Vidin and Smolyan to prepare the ground, for the launching of sound one-stop-shops in Bulgaria. The consortium is integrated by an internationally renowned research centre (Bocconi University) expert in business modeling, 2 finance experts and Climate Alliance, a European network of local authorities for sustainability.

The overall aim of ENERGee Watch is to enable peer to peer learning for regional and local authorities in order to precisely define, monitor and verify their sustainable energy and climate actions. Its main target are associations and networks of cities and regions and the learning process will be focused on how different sustainable energy and climate mitigation projects have been monitored and evaluated. Primarily, we will build on existing platforms and needs assessment surveys to perform a needs assessment and gaps identification with public bodies for learning and match these needs with available best practices. Then, public authorities and their associations and agencies will be selected and matched with one of the seven mentors who are all partners of ENERGee Watch. The learning program will be divided into four modules that include: i) data collection, ii) monitoring and verification, iii) indicators for adaption to climate change, iv) data display, dissemination and validation by final users (local authorities). ENERGee Watch will launch 4 modules per year (one per each topic, twelve in total) with a total of 72 participating mentees, which are all associations or networks which can distribute the knowledge further to their members. The added value of ENERGee Watch is that the learning program is not limited to a capacity building process but instead enables networking and examples from practice shown on the field. In the first step of each cycle - the masterclass - each participant can choose the learning objectives they want to accomplish in order that their progress can be tracked, and thus transparent standards will be set. The learning program will ideally result in improved policies and MRV standards, as well as partnerships for innovative sustainable energy policies and MRV practices.