START2ACT aims to reduce residential energy consumption in the EU via changing the behaviour of consumers in their everyday lives by approaching them at their workplace. With a focus on European start-ups and young SMEs, the project aims at triggering action by young entrepreneurs and their emerging enterprises as well as by the owners and staff of young SMEs to introduce energy efficiency measures within their daily routines. Even though each start-up and SME consumes relatively small energy amounts, the collective environmental impact of 20 million SMEs in the EU is massive, contributing to 64% of environmental impact. Active engagement of start-ups and young SMEs is essential in order to reach the 20-20-20 EU goals and there is market potential for almost all enterprises to cost effectively reduce their energy consumption. START2ACT will unleash the potential of energy savings at European start-ups and young SMEs via a set of innovative educational and capacity building measures. A key area of intervention to increase energy efficiency through behavioural change is office equipment, the fastest growing energy user in the business world, consuming 15% of the total electricity used in offices, which is expected to rise to 30% by 2020. START2ACT aims to trigger the use and uptake of the many available tools and solutions offering a great potential for energy and money savings, yet not adequately used due to lack of understanding of how to use them in practice and due to insufficient engagement of people towards changing behaviour in everyday life. START2ACT aims also to trigger sustainable procurement of office equipment, including the selection and furnishings of premises (HVAC, lighting, etc.), and goods and services. In so doing, START2ACT will sow the seeds of a sustainable energy culture in start-ups and young SMEs.

The overall objective of the project is setting up the Roundtables to implement smart finance for smart buildings initiative (SF4SB) in Slovakia and the Czechia, working out with stakeholders roadmaps and action plans aimed at developing the three pillars that underpin the initiative and launch implementation of the roadmaps with implementing short-term measures agreed in the roadmaps and the action plans before end of the project. The Roundtables dedicated to energy efficiency investment will be permanent multilateral discussion forums gathering the relevant stakeholders such as government, regional authorities and municipalities, financial sector, ESCOs, homeowners, operators throughout the energy efficiency value chain and construction sector. The majority of operators in the construction sector in are SMEs (large proportion are micro enterprises). Moreover, many SMEs in the energy efficiency value chain, particularly in energy performance of buildings, are essential for market disruptive innovations that are making the energy transformation in building sector successful. Therefore, the project will put particular focus on SMEs. An essential aim of the renovation efforts in both countries will be organizing renovations into larger blocks to benefit from better financing conditions and economics of scale. Therefore, the roadmaps will underpin the necessary coordination and support for creating a large-scale pipeline of bankable projects through aggregation of large number of small projects to feed the financial schemes developed by the financial sector with investment packages of a critical size for making the use of the private sources of financing as efficient and effective as possible.

The project “Valuable Creativity” focuses on creativity as a key competence and necessary skill for adults working in companies and organizations who are challenged by rapid and disruptive changes due digitalization; and similar high demand of climate protection; energy saving and transformation to circular economy. “Valuable Creativity” is a project aimed to find and present solutions for creativity development on one of the most difficult adult education disciplines; Workplace learning! The project shall collect knowledge, methods and experience on how it is possible to introduce creativity methods where the need for creativity is high, but where the conditions in terms of time and possibility to organize creativity learning often are the most limited. The partner-organizations Prios; SIEA and Progress Consult have a long experience in delivering innovation and training programs to production and service-industry. The partners will through their cooperation with adult education providers, adult educators and in-service trainers from the SME industry collect the most promising methods and cases on how creativity can be addressed to actual workplace and company situations. Based on this collection, they will develop a hands-on training and capacity building material, which can show how creative processes and creative learning methods can be used to involve employees at all levels of the company into changing processes. The aim is also to present how adult educators and/or artists interested in transforming their creative abilities into actual workplace settings can be organized. The criteria is to keep a strong focus on the value created in companies, but also value in the broader sense of more sustainable production, corporate responsibility and resilience. The training material will appear as a full virtual format in three sections; an Open Education Resource (OER); two training MOOCs and an impact assessment tool. The OER will contain the relevant themes about creativity learning in workplace settings. Through text, interviews, infographics and videoclips it will justify how important creativity is to solve some of the most urgent challenges of the companies, and how such learning processes can be initiated. The OER will highlight the impact of creativity learning and it will present some of the most tangible pathways to implementation, will be designed as an entrance point for the Project. The OER will be open source and presented in four languages, and make the partners able to communicate awareness about this topic to all cooperation partners in their respective countries. The OER gives the knowledge base for two effective, online training programs organized as MOOCs. The first MOOC will be aimed at the target group of adult educators, artists interested in working with business and industry and also in-service trainers from the Industry. It will give them an introduction course on how to approach creativity at the workplace and how to find the right methodology to create value in the form of pattern-breaking learning.The target group of the second MOOC are company managers, HR Managers and those responsible for in-service training. The course will introduce cases on how companies successfully have used creative methods to bring forward new solutions of products, new markets, sustainability plans, eco-innovative production and new ways of work-organization. The OER and the two MOOCS will appear as one “Valuable Creativity” digital training program and will be available and delivered through a joint Learning Management System. The virtual training material (e-learning) will be accessible in 4 languages. Each partner will introduce the material country-wise and the English version will appear as a learning resource within the European Basic Skills Network and potentially through the EPALE. A component in the program ensures that it is possible to invite people from art and cultural production to participate in design and communication of the material. The training materials will be tested through direct assessment from invited people/companies from the target group. The results of this will be concluded in the assessment tool for creativity impact, which is an integrated part of the MOOCs. Creativity training is not a new phenomenon. It has been used in HR development, and it has been used within the creative industry. “Valuable Creativity” has the mission to bring creativity learning and training into the field of workplace learning and to present it as a relevant part of modern basic skills required for all industries and companies on the edge of 4th industrial revolution, where artificial intelligence, robotics and growing climate crises will create ground-breaking changes for all working places and to cope with the growing disruption of workplaces.

The Concerted Action will support the implementation of the renewable energy directive 2009/28/EC. As with the first and second phase, the objectives of CA-RES3 are directly linked to the transposition and implementation of the RES Directive. The third phase of the CA-RES will also provide further opportunities to explore possibilities for common approaches in specific areas of implementation of the RES Directive. The CA-RES3 will achieve the objectives stated above through a series of seven plenary meetings and a joint workshop with the CA EED and the CA EPBD for discussion on the various topics. These meetings will provide a confidential forum for structured discussions and cross-learning between participating countries. This exchange concentrates on key requirements of the RES Directive according to the needs of the participating countries as well as the European Commission. As such, it will contribute to the achievement of the national RES targets set by the Directive. The CA-RES3 will emphasize topics that require common approaches and/or benefit from good practice exchange between participating countries. The CA-RES3 Core Themes will address a number of aspects including support schemes for electricity and heat, integrating RES into electricity networks, the use of RES for heating and cooling and in buildings, disclosure/guarantees of origin, biomass mobilisation and sustainability as well as the use of RES in transport. The confidential character of the CA-RES3 allows participating countries to discuss in confidence how to best implement the RES Directive. Thus, the need for confidentiality will be emphasized towards all participating institutions, and confidentiality agreements will be signed by all participants.