Aggregation and improved Governance for untapping Residential Energy Efficiency potential in the Basque Country

ended

Energy retrofitting of post-World War II private multifamily residential buildings has been identified as a great challenge across Europe. Lack of adequate investment schemes, misalignment between residents' needs and grants and loans' design, complex governance and management, and fragmented demand are hindering the great energy saving potential captured in this sector, especially in South Europe, where fragmented property structure and longer return periods in energy efficiency investments complicate reaching the necessary agreements to retrofit. To tackle this complex challenge, AGREE aims at triggering investments in energy efficient retrofitting of private multifamily residential building estates through the development and deployment of innovative and replicable mechanisms for: 1) Demand activation and aggregation: based on an integrated approach to retrofitting that includes energy efficiency and other drivers such as improved habitability and accessibility, and benefitting from cost-effective energy retrofitting by aggregation of demand of similar building types, built at the same time and inhabited by similar populations. 2) Specific financing solution based on demand segmentation and tailored combination of grants and loans through the activation of a specific Retrofitting Fund led by the Basque Government in concertation with the private finance community, to reach traditionally excluded populations and unlock energy retrofitting in multi-ownership buildings. 3) Improved governance, ensuring residents, finance community and other relevant stakeholders' engagement along the process, as well as multilevel coordination to ensure effective policy design and implementation. Led by the Basque Government, the AGREE consortium and relevant stakeholders will co-design and implement an innovative and replicable Deployment Package to retrofit multifamily building estates dating from 1940-80 in 3 pilot cases in the Basque Country, mobilizing an investment of about 8.5M€