Energy Efficiency Finance Market Place

In February 2020, we attended one of Europe’s largest energy efficiency events, the Energy Efficiency Finance Market Place in Brussels.

The event was organized by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy, Directorate-General for Climate Action and the Executive Agency for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (EASME), and the Covenant of Mayors. These annual events bring together the most exciting, successful or most promising energy efficiency projects from many European countries and creates the opportunity to introduce themselves, their experiences, the challenges they face and their successes.

This year, more than 550 guests attended the event, representing municipalities, industry, financial organizations, and many other areas and topics, showcasing nearly 45 successful initiatives. Several of them were projects similar to RenoHUb, and there were even specific one-stop-shop initiatives. This gave us a deeper insight into the RenoBooster in Vienna and into the Innovate projects, both deal with supporting residential renovations in a one-stop shop model. We also got to know professionals working on these projects in person, whom we will definitely meet during our work.

We also participated on the energy poverty-focused (Socialwatt) section and on horizontal workshops on innovative financing solutions (eg. EuroPACE, RenOnBill). We have met a lot of exciting projects and professionals and look forward to next year’s event, where we will be presenting the RenoHUb project.

EASME’s contractors meeting
Project managers including RenoHUb’s project manager stayed an extra day in Brussels to take part in a special program where H2020 project coordinators had the opportunity to build relationship, exchange experiences and learn from colleagues.

Participants reviewed the future funding areas of the LIFE 2021-2027 Clean Energy Transition sub-program. EASME associates presented the following topics:

  • Key messages on project management
  • Avoiding common financial mistakes
  • EASME H2020 project overview
  • The current state of the multiannual financial framework for LIFE and Horizon Europe, the restructuring of resources from Horizon Europe to LIFE,  the establishment of a new financial and institutional system for the period 2021-2027

Representatives of the various projects got to know each other and the RenoHUb initiative through thematic workshops.