Energy renovation solutions – Boosting building renovation through effective markets and instruments

Expected Impact:

Proposals should present the concrete results which will be delivered by the activities and demonstrate how these results will contribute to the topic-specific impacts. This demonstration should rely on a solid analysis of the current situation, realistic assumptions and baselines, and establish clear causality links between activities, results and impacts.

For Scope A:

In terms of qualitative impact, proposals under this topic should demonstrate how they will contribute to the following outcomes, as relevant:

• Increased demand for energy renovation and increased energy renovation rates
• Implementation of demand aggregation strategies
• Viable business models for renovations with reduced costs and time, replicable at large scale
• Improved capacity of companies in the building renovation sector to deliver high quality renovations.

In terms of quantitative impact, proposals should quantify their results and impacts using the indicators provided for the topic, when they are relevant for the proposed activities. Proposals are not expected to address all the listed impacts and indicators. The results and impacts should be quantified for the end of the project and for 5 years after the end of the project. The quantitative indicators for this topic include:

• Number of building units renovated and/or increased renovation rates in the territories targeted by the project
• Number of building units that undergo a deep renovation and/or increased deep renovation rates
• Percentage reduction in renovation costs compared to baseline, potentially detailed by building typology and type of intervention
• Investments in building energy renovation triggered
• Number of companies with improved technical, organisational and business capacity to deliver energy renovations through the uptake of new products, materials, services and processes under the scope of the topic.

Proposals should also provide indicators which are specific to their proposed activities.

For Scope B:

In terms of qualitative impact, proposals under this topic should demonstrate how they will contribute to the following outcomes:

• Enhanced market uptake and effective use of advanced EPCs, SRIs, RPs, DBLs and IEQ
• Roll-out of existing schemes and tools allowing enhanced, integrated, cost-effective building assessments and staged renovation strategies
• Improved use of buildings performance data in actual renovations or building management by financial institutions, service providers and building owners/operators.

In terms of quantitative impact, proposals should quantify their results and impacts using the indicators provided for the topic, when they are relevant for the proposed activities. Proposals are not expected to address all the listed impacts and indicators. The results and impacts should be quantified for the end of the project and for 5 years after the end of the project. The quantitative indicators for this topic include:

• Number of Renovation Passports issued and applied to actual renovation projects
• Number of renovations or building management projects making use of enhanced and integrated building assessment schemes (EPCs, SRI and IEQ) and data repositories (DBL)
• Number of relevant stakeholders (e.g. building owners, service providers, financial institutions, one-stop-shops) actively using improved building-related data and services.

Proposals should also provide indicators which are specific to their proposed activities.

For both scopes A and B

Proposals should also quantify their impacts related to the following common indicators for the LIFE Clean Energy Transition sub-programme:

• Primary energy savings triggered by the project in GWh/year
• Final energy savings triggered by the project in GWh/year
• Renewable energy generation triggered by the project (in GWh/year)
• Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (in tCO2-eq/year)
• Investments in sustainable energy (energy efficiency and renewable energy) triggered by the project (cumulative, in million Euro).

Funding rate

Other Action Grants (OAGs) — 95% 

Objective:

This topic contributes to the goals of the EU Renovation Wave strategy^[1] and aims to help implement current building policies and strategic plans, notably the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD)^[2] and the elements of the European Affordable Housing Plan^[3] of relevance for building renovation. This topic supports energy renovations that provide scalable, high-performance and affordable solutions to massify renovations and improve the energy performance and the affordability of buildings and make buildings active energy system assets.

This topic addresses areas that are key for the achievement of the ambitious EU targets for the decarbonisation of buildings, along with improving the energy security and industrial competitiveness in the EU and the affordability of energy. This topic supports the Better Homes partnerships^[4] bringing together stakeholders from a fragmented renovation chain to collaborate, conceptualise and deploy renovation projects on the ground. It aims to deploy approaches that bring together market actors and policy frameworks in order to support the large-scale roll out of renovation solutions. The topic aims to increase the attractiveness and cost-effectiveness of building energy performance upgrades and to reduce the administrative, logistical and financial burden that still goes along with building retrofitting.

The topic also aims to ensure the market uptake and integration to the policy framework of advanced building policy and information instruments, to increase their public acceptance and demonstrate their value for verification and financing of building renovation and upgrade. Proposals should, where appropriate, explore synergies with, build on or complement, and promote the market deployment of the results from projects funded under other EU programmes, notably Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe.

The EU is facing important increases in energy prices, driven by market volatility and exacerbated by its dependence on imported fossil fuels. A key priority for the EU is to strengthen the resilience of its energy system vis-a-vis geopolitical crises impacting the global energy market. Therefore, applicants under this topic are invited, where possible, to develop and implement long-term structural sustainable and energy efficiency measures to enhance EU energy system resilience against future crises, in coherence with short-term energy relief measures needed to respond to the current shock on the global energy markets.

Scope:

Proposals are expected to focus on one of the two scopes (A or B) established below. In their introduction, proposals should clearly identify the scope against which the proposal will be evaluated. In case a proposal addresses elements of more than one scope, this should be duly justified.

Scope A: Scaling up high-quality and competitive energy renovations

Under Scope A, actions should aim to increase renovation rates and deliver progress towards a fully decarbonised, zero emission building stock by 2050, as defined in the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. Proposals should focus on removing market barriers, stimulating demand and scaling up energy renovations.

Proposals should deploy strategies and business models for renovation that can be replicated across multiple buildings and markets, increasing current renovation rates, aggregating demand for products and services with a view to facilitating faster, more cost-effective, affordable, simple and efficient renovations.

Proposals should support the large-scale roll out of solutions, models and approaches that deliver high-quality renovations with energy performance guarantees or other business models, driving market confidence and stimulating investments. They should support the competitiveness and productivity of construction companies, for example through industrialised and standardised processes, digital tools, improved coordination across the supply chain and the uptake of circular and low-carbon solutions.

Proposals should take into account all relevant actors in the renovation value chain, notably building owners, energy solution providers and investors, occupants, public authorities, financial institutions, construction sector representatives, electricity market operators, etc.

In line with the 2050 vision for the building stock, besides improving energy performance, indoor environmental quality and decarbonising energy use in buildings, proposals can go beyond and consider reduction of whole lifecycle emissions, addressing materials, or increased resilience against climate risks in renovations.

Proposals should explain how the proposed activities are adapted to the specific context and maturity of the markets and/or countries addressed and should coordinate with existing support, funding instruments, one stop shops or existing renovation facilitation services in their area of action. Proposals may consider deploying technical building systems and strategies enabling flexibility.

Scope B: Strengthening information instruments under the EPBD

Proposals are expected to strengthen the market and policy uptake, usability and effectiveness of key EPBD instruments, notably Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), Renovation Passports (RPs) and where relevant the Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI), and the Digital Building Logbooks (DBLs) and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ).

Proposals should demonstrate the reliability and market relevance of these instruments for their intended users and customers, and strengthen their contribution to achieving EPBD policy objectives. This roll-out should result in increased and improved use of building energy data for renovation and/or energy management.

Proposals should address the improved implementation and accelerated market roll-out of existing schemes and tools that improve on the one hand the accuracy and quality, and on the other hand the integration and consistency of EPCs, RPs and where appropriate, the SRI, the DBL and IEQ.

Proposals should detail their specific approach, where relevant, for enhancing transparency, assessing renovation needs and energy costs, improving indoor environmental quality and measuring the impacts of building performance improvements. These instruments should strengthen the market value of energy performance by linking its improvements to building valuation and investment decisions.

The roll-out and market uptake of Renovation Passports in line with the recast EPBD should enable clear, staged renovation pathways for building owners, ensuring coherence with EPCs and where relevant, SRI assessments, the DBL and IEQ. This could include actions to improve the practical market implementation aspects, as well as measures to create demand and promote the use of RPs.

The proposed activities need to be compatible with all implementation choices that Member States make in the context of transposing the EPBD and thus need to follow the policy evolutions and frameworks as appropriate. Proposals should also take into account existing funding schemes as well as relevant renovation support services, including one-stop shops.

Technological, including innovative, solutions may be employed as enablers but must not be at the centre of the action.

For both scopes A and B:

All proposals are required to implement pilot actions in real-life buildings or renovation projects, demonstrating practical application, effectiveness and replicability of the proposed solutions and instruments.

Proposals must be submitted by at least 3 applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities) from 3 different eligible countries.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 2 million would allow the specific objectives to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

[1] Communication A Renovation Wave for Europe - greening our buildings, creating jobs, improving lives, COM(2020) 662 final

[2] DIRECTIVE (EU) 2024/1275

[3] COM(2025) 1025 final

[4] European Affordable Housing Plan: Action 3. Combining affordability, sustainability and quality in housing