Bulgaria is facing a serious challenge to radically transform its extremely grant-dependent energy efficiency support schemes, while at the same time preserving the speed and scope of the clean energy transition. This is especially valid for the residential sector, where the existing 100% grant mechanism for building renovation has to be quickly reformed into a sustainable financing scheme, at the same time targeting more ambitious energy targets and taking into account the overspread energy poverty. Similar situation is evidenced in the industry, where investments are usually prompted by operational programmes offering up to 80% grants. Considering the principles of functioning of the EU Green Deal and the possibilities under the Recovery Package, innovative financial instruments have to be quickly designed and adopted in a transparent and inclusive way, significantly improving the leveraging effect of public resources, while at the same taking into account the limited investment capacities and purchasing power of the consumers. To address these policy and market gaps, BeSmart aims to support smart financing implementation by setting up a permanent discussion forum, gathering central and local authorities, energy efficiency experts, the financial sector, ESCOs, homeowners, industry, construction and SME sector representatives. The discussion forum and the 9 roundtables planned under the project are specifically designed to support new business models and utilize investment opportunities derived from the increased financing for energy efficiency and renewable energy at EU level. They will gather and upscale existing best practices, support the development of national and local-level strategies, propose improvements in the national policy framework and implementation programmes, develop the institutional and legal framework, and increase the transparency in the policy-making process, leading to increased trust of the investors and better functioning of the market.

Triple-A has a very practical result-oriented approach, seeking to answer three questions: - How to assess the financing instruments and risks an early stage? - How to agree on the Triple-A investments, based on selected key performance indicators? - How to assign the identified investment ideas with possible financing schemes? The Triple-A scheme is introduced, compromising three critical steps (answering each question), with the following main outputs: - Step 1 - Assess: Member States (MS) risk profiles and mitigation polices, including a Web based database, enabling national and sectoral comparability, market maturity identification, good practices experiences exchange, reducing thus uncertainty for investors. - Step 2 - Agree: Standardised Triple-A tools, efficient benchmarks, and guidelines, translated in consortium partners’ languages, accelerating and scaling up investments. - Step 3 - Assign: In-country demonstrations, replicability and overall exploitation, including recommendations on realistic and feasible investments in the national and sectoral context, as well as on short and medium term financing. The Triple-A case study countries were selected to promote diversity across a number of factors, including: a leading European economy (Germany), an innovation front-runner in energy (The Netherlands), a weak economy, went through one of the longest and most severe recessions (Greece), an economy with slow economic recovery (Italy), a diversified economy with a strategic geographical location having some of the largest European firms (Spain), a country that has experienced one of the fastest economic recoveries in Europe (Lithuania), a progressing country with a once sceptical stance towards low-carbon development (Czech Republic), and a country, recovering from a slow transition to a market economy, with growing regional strategic role and significant ambition towards EU processes (Republic of Bulgaria).