Energy efficiency of buildings plays a paramount role in the European Commission (EC), who aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in Europe through a socially-fair transition in a cost-efficient manner. The role of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) to boost building energy renovation is widely considered crucial in the literature because they are fundamental to provide better information to all the actors involved in the building renovation process. Besides, EPCs can act as a link between the different types of actions (institutional, financial, others) that will be needed to accomplish the building renovation goals. The crossCert project will create a product testing methodology for the new EPC approaches that will result in: improved accuracy and usability of the EPCs, people-centric designs, and increased homogeneity across Europe. The crossCert project is based on a bottom-up approach, with the following stages: (1) Cross-testing among energy authorities of current EPCs and the new approaches/concepts/initiatives, using more than 140 buildings in 10 European countries, and creating a public benchmarking repository of test cases; (2) Comparing and analysing the results between different approaches; (3) Elaboration of policy recommendations, which will include potential improvements on the accuracy, usability and harmonisation; (4) Engaging networks and alliances for analysis and (5) for outreach. Beyond accuracy, usability and harmonization, crossCert will use the cross-assessment exercise to conduct research and issue guidelines on: training and education of certified EPC issuers; EPC promotion and marketing; adapting EPCs investor needs; linking next-generation of EPCs to energy audits, logbooks and Building Renovation Passports; and EPCs and one-stop shops for building renovation.

CapaCITIES 2.0 is designed as a support action for national and regional authorities to advance their governance structures for providing dedicated support for cities to achieve the EU Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission (EU Cities Mission) - answering to the Call HORIZON-MISS-2024-CIT-02-01. As a central initiative to foster and strengthen national narratives for the EU Cities Mission, it will coordinate actions across climate-neutral initiatives for cities in Europe, align and speed up efforts towards the goals of the Mission. CapaCITIES 2.0 will further shape a European environment conducive to urban climate neutrality transitions for national, regional and local authorities. It will initiate and strengthen national change processes to establish and mature national networks and platforms as well as multi-level governance in the entire EU, building on the experience of the CapaCITIES that already started setting-up national platforms in 15 EU countries. It provides dedicated support for public authorities to put enabling conditions and measures for cities in place to achieve the EU Cities Mission. Thereby, it contributes to reach (1) Increased preparedness and capacity of national, regional and local authorities in EU Member States and countries associated to Horizon Europe to engage in cities’ transition towards climate neutrality; (2) Improved ability to effectively address country-specific challenges and barriers for cities to achieve climate neutrality related to current regulatory frameworks, funding and financing, and governance structures and promotion of best-practices through transnational exchanges and sharing of experience and (3) Enhanced synergies with R&I national/international communities, relevant initiatives, and partnerships such as the ‘Driving Urban Transitions to a Sustainable Future’ Horizon Europe Partnership and the NetZeroCities – the EU Mission Platform(NZC) for the implementation of the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission.

The goal of the EXCITE project is to apply the well-established energy management scheme of the European Energy Award (eea) in Central and Eastern European municipalities, enabling them to become trusted partners to the investors and engaging local communities for deliberate climate action. This, on its end, will help attract new innovative businesses to the involved cities and municipalities and will intensify the local economies, supporting them in the surge for better living standard and maintaining young and vibrant communities proactively contributing to the energy transition. Through applying the methodology the eea methodology, the project will enhance the implementation of energy efficiency measures at local level through securing the necessary technical, economic and social conditions for attracting of private investors, promoting public entrepreneurship and successful leveraging of the scarce public resources. As achievement this goal requires broad public support, the project will invest significant efforts in developing interface capacities for engagement with the civil society and incentivize local communities to proactively use the available opportunities, becoming a driving force in the European energy transition. The actions will also support the implementation of the Covenant of Mayors, enabling more municipalities to join the initiative and serving as major data input and result monitoring tool for the actual implementation of the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) of the involved municipalities. Last but not least, the embracing of the eea methodology will become the basis of an action-oriented peer learning platform, transferring experience and know-how from already well-developed Austrian, Swiss and French municipalities but also enabling peer to peer learning between cities in Eastern Europe, gradually shifting to more sustainable practices in their economic and social development.

The countries in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region and in the former Soviet Union republics (CIS region) have the most energy-poor people in Europe. Main reasons contributing to energy poverty for people with low income are due to high energy prices and poor energy efficiency of the buildings, building heating systems and household appliances. The ComAct project is focusing on these regions and in particular on their specificity that the housing stock (characterised with large percentage of multi-family apartment blocks) is predominantly in private ownership and consequently energy-poor households live in their privately-owned apartments. To address the complex roots of energy poverty, there is a need to develop a new approach in order to influence the energy costs substantially and make the energy efficiency (EE) interventions affordable, and consequently reduce the high energy poverty level in the CEE and CIS region. The ComAct project aims to make high-impact/high-cost energy-efficient improvements in multi-family apartment buildings in the CEE and CIS regions affordable and manageable for energy-poor communities as well as to create the necessary assistance conditions for lifting them out of energy poverty. To achieve this main goal, firstly, an approach to identification and selection of energy-poor communities is developed, followed by interventions in three main dimensions: 1) empowering and activating the communities of homeowners’ associations; 2) developing/adapting financial tools that provide financing for low income families; and 3) optimising technical solutions that provide most favourable cost-benefit ratio for the energy efficient improvements at a multi-family apartment building level. In order to demonstrate applicability, benefits and potential for alleviating energy poverty, 5 pilot cases take place in Hungary, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Lithuania and Ukraine.

The overall aim of BUSLeague is to address and overcome the challenges of the stimulation of demand for energy skilled workforce (demand side), along with hands-on capacity building to increase the number of skilled workforce across the building design, operation and maintenance value chain (supply side). BUSLeague will achieve this objective by developing and implementing a cross European recognition of energy skills, together with upscaling successful training methods and techniques which have already been developed in previous EU and National initiatives such as BUILD UP Skills, Construction Skills. BUSLeague focusses on a blend of four elements: mutual recognition of energy skills, awareness raising, capacity building and legislative changes. Implementation will be done at country specific and regional levels; based on a blend of measures to stimulate demand complimented with hands-on and practical upskilling of involved local and regional workforce. In this way engagement of SMEs will be ensured. BUSLeague is formed by a coalition of former BUILD UP Skills and Construction Skills projects. The partners believe that by working together the national implementation plans and developed means will improve and become more attractive and effective. BUSLeague is strengthened by experienced anthropology researchers and educational technology researchers in order to prove impact and to optimize the blends for stimulating demand and optimizing learning transfer of applied learning means and materials.