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.

While building on results of recently (or soon to be) concluded EU projects, NEON will undertake coordination and support activities to advance the leveraging technologies and concepts in order to deliver the next-generation integrated energy services for communities, targeted to enhance the life quality of European citizens, while improving the performance of energy system. In this endeavour, NEON will exploit building energy efficiency, renewable energy generation and storage, and demand flexibility to increase energy savings, reduce CO2 emissions, and provide cost savings across sectors. NEON will engage grid stakeholders, service providers and final consumers to establish, in co-creation, the cross-sectoral arrangements and underlying service concepts. NEON will join multi-measure energy efficiency interventions and advanced control capabilities to maximize the positive impact of energy efficiency by improving the building operation performance and make the demand-side flexibility as manageable and procurable resource. NEON will advance the energy efficiency services already available on the market and couple them with other energy services and non-energy benefits, providing an integrated approach to energy generation, storage and consumption management. To enable servitization of proposed concepts, NEON will bring innovative business and contracting models by integrating EPC with P4P schemes, and establish innovative M&V methodology. The concept of Citizen Energy Communities (CECs), as introduced by Directive (EU) 2019/944, will be leveraged to set the legal and business foundations to enable faster market uptake, and facilitate communities, both residential and non-residential, in becoming energy-efficient. The proposed service concepts and business models will be showcased in 4 CEC setups (residential, non-residential and mixed) serving as early adopters, whereby follow-up replication plans across 7 “follower” communities will be developed during the project.

Biodiversity protection and restoration are critical for maintaining the ecological balance and ensuring the planet's sustainability. In the absence of sustainable management and protection of natural resources, the negative impacts of climate change and other environmental issues will only increase. Private investment can be a critical tool that has the potential to play a transformative role in financing conservation and restoration efforts, as public financing alone may be insufficient to address the scale of these challenges. By activating innovative sustainable finance solutions and incorporating technological advances within the field of geospatial analytics, the project can attract private investment in a way that benefits the environment and secures investors’ confidence. BIO-CAPITAL project is going to develop and implement an interdisciplinary research and innovation endeavour by combining actions in the three fields of (i) Biodiversity protection and restoration, (ii) biodiversity-friendly Financing mechanisms and (iii) advanced Space Technology. The implementation will involve three key steps to leverage innovation. First, BIO-CAPITAL will analyse, understand and learn from UCs. Second, it will elaborate, monitor, and demonstrate through UCs. Finally, it will co-develop, implement and amplify back to the UCs. BIO-CAPITAL will engage stakeholders through iterative processes, in order to reach shared views on the aforementioned three stages and how they can be effectively combined to increase financial flows for biodiversity protection, restoration and sustainable utilisation.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are considered essential to solving the climate crisis. They have the potential to simultaneously address climate change, biodiversity loss and human wellbeing and development, by providing different ecosystem services. However, the typically small size of NBS projects, the difficulties to measure and monetize their co-benefits as well as the long time frame for investment returns and the risk profile, undermine their attractiveness for funding. In comparison to NBS alone, the combination of NBS and ecosystem-based approaches, physical measures and technological measures is able to provide measurable outcomes quicker, reducing the risk profile and facilitating faster implementation and long-time maintenance, broadening opportunities for ecosystem innovation and increasing investment attractiveness. Aiming for bankability-by-design, RISE-IN will assess a set of climate resilient solutions (CRS), including NBS and ecosystem- based approaches and physical measures, by mapping and quantifying their co-benefits and identifying innovative financing and investment opportunities accordingly. Co-creation and participatory processes with local stakeholders, including investors and businesses, will enable the screening of the most adequate solutions for each site, in terms of functionality and funding and within a framework of just resilience. The assessment will be complemented by 3 climate risk assessment models that will reduce uncertainty regarding risks associated with extreme events, water run-off and capital loss. RISE-IN will demonstrate this concept for flood management (most costly type of disaster in Europe) in Cesena (IT), Christchurch (NZ) and Póvoa de Varzim (PT). RISE-IN demonstrations will be further tailored for replication in Ghent (BE), Zhytomyr (UA), Kadikoy (TR) and in 3 additional sites of Demonstrator Cities (Demo Cities) to prove the impact of the concept to facilitate bankability and upscale implementation across EU and Internationally.

Urgent accelerated action is required to adapt to unavoidable and ongoing climate change. Climate-resilient investments must be substantially scaled up. Public budgets will not be able to address the adaptation financing challenge alone, financing from the private sector will also be necessary. CLIMATEFIT contributes to bridging the resilience financing gap by providing critical insight and building the capacities of Public Authorities (PAs) to attract and orchestrate various public and private funding & financing sources, and of Financing and Investment Entities (FIEs) to discover and access resilient investment opportunities. CLIMATEFIT will experiment on a mix of 20 territories in Southern, Eastern and Northwestern Europe in their transformational pathways towards climate resilience. The journey will start by taking stock of funding & financing barriers and enablers gathered in the Financing Landscape taxonomy. CLIMATEFIT will create an ingenious Manual for leveraging finance to, 1) co-design 20 innovative investment strategies allowing to identify sources of funding 2) develop 10 credible and scalable investment plans to help better negotiate and articulate financing streams and define investment concepts, and 3) pilot 4 bankable, tailored investment cases. CLIMATEFIT will build a Pathway for FIEs to accelerate finance, test refined methods to reward climate-resilient investment and apply smart adaptation funding and financing solutions. It will establish Local Resilience Taskforces (LRTs) composed of PAs and FIEs that propose a catalytic and systemic approach to resilience financing. Led by WCF, the high-level consortium will build capacity, co-create solutions with PAs and FIEs, and inform EU adaptation and sustainable finance policies. Finally, CLIMATEFIT aims to boost resilience financing in Europe by consolidating the dynamics in LRTs, and to promote and scale its research findings through the European Network of LRTs and its user-oriented One-Stop Shop.