Scaling up Public Energy Efficiency Investments via Standardising Citizen Financing Schemes

ended

The energy transition causes significant challenges in the building sector, which demand profound changes not only on the economic perspective, such as implementing innovative financial models to overcome financial barriers, but also fostering cooperation between all actors involved, paying particular attention to citizens and communities. It is essential to advance the business cases for energy efficiency measures and to increase support for respective projects, by standardising citizen financing in investment programs. There is therefore a need to consider the role of different actors (public authorities, financial institutions, project developers) and the interactions with innovative citizen models, particularly at the regional/national scale. The main objective of CitizEE is to support European public authorities to scale up investments for energy efficiency in the building sector through attracting citizen private investments. By integrating tailored and widely adopted crowdfunding and cooperative financing schemes with adequate available or to be developed Public Financing Instruments (PFIs), CitizEE will enable to set up large-scale community energy efficiency programs while strengthening know-how of regional/national key stakeholders. The ambition is to put in place a sound enabling legal, financial and operational environment to attract citizen private investments coupled with Public Financing Instruments (PFIs) aimed at: (i)mitigating performance & credit risks, (ii) closing financing gaps, (iii)enlarging citizen access financing, (iv) reducing transaction costs (v) enhancing capacity of local crowdfunding operators and cooperatives and (vi) stimulating the required investment towards higher renovation rates and thus a more efficient building stock.