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Call key data
Facilitation structures for the renovation of public buildings
Funding Program
LIFE - sub-programme “Clean Energy Transition”
Call number
LIFE-2024-CET-RENOPUB
deadlines
Opening
18.04.2024
Deadline
19.09.2024 17:00
Funding rate
95%
Call budget
€ 3,500,000.00
Estimated EU contribution per project
between € 1,000,000.00 and € 1,500,000.00
Link to the call
Link to the submission
Call content
short description
Proposals should establish and operate regional/national facilitation structures, for example one-stop-shops, to accelerate the renovation wave in the public sector (e.g. office buildings, social housing, schools, leisure facilities etc.) covering a larger territory and offering to public authorities a comprehensive, all-inclusive service from technical, financial to legal advice, procurement and quality assurance of works.
Call objectives
The public sector plays a key role in delivering the energy transition, with a unique mandate over their public assets and a unique convening power on actors across the value chain. The European Green Deal’s Renovation Wave aims to double the renovation rate of buildings by 2030, which requires also massive investment into the public building stock. In line with the REPowerEU plan to phase out EU dependence on fossil fuel imports, the public sector is called to play a key role in reducing its energy consumption through building renovations. The revised Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) requires the public sector at local, regional and national levels to reduce their total final energy consumption by 1.9% annually and to renovate at least 3% of the total floor area of their heated and/or cooled buildings annually, which should be transformed into at least nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) or zero-emission buildings (ZEB).
Currently, a substantial barrier to increased renovation rates in the public sector is to create and sustain in the long-term the financial and technical capacity amongst public authorities to develop projects. In particular, small and medium-sized municipalities often do not have sufficient resources to dedicate staff towards developing a project pipeline.
The challenge remains to upscale renovations of public buildings to nZEB or ZEB standards and to demonstrate the exemplary role of the public authorities in decarbonising their assets and leading the way towards the European clean energy transition. Hence, facilitation structures (e.g. one-stop-shops or similar) are needed at regional and national levels that can support a larger number of public project promoters in designing and delivering ambitious renovation projects in the public sector at scale and capitalising on existing solutions. The experience from the technical assistance facilities (ELENA, H2020 PDA, eee-f) has shown that a range of competences are needed in public project promoters to bring sustainable energy projects alive, namely expertise in technical aspects (energy audits, project design), financial engineering (Energy Performance Contracts, blending different finance sources) and legal aspects (bundling, pooling, procurement, applying Energy Performance Contracts).
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Expected effects and impacts
Proposals submitted under this topic 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 include a detailed analysis of the starting point and a set of well-substantiated assumptions, and establish clear causality links between the results and the expected impacts.
Proposals should result in long-term facilitation structures which are tested, implemented and operational at the end of the action, i.e. delivering renovation projects to nZEB and ZEB standards.
Proposals should quantify their impacts using the indicators listed below, where relevant, as well as other project-specific performance indicators:
- Number of public buildings renovated to nZEB or ZEB standards targeted through the facilitation structures.
- Average percentage of energy savings per investment project.
- Number of public authorities supported through the services of the facilitation structures.
- Additional amount of funding support (EU and/or private sources) leveraged into the territory thanks to facilitation services.
- Number of jobs directly and indirectly created.
All proposals submitted under this topic should also quantify their impacts related to the following common indicators for the LIFE Clean Energy Transition subprogramme:
- 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 gases emissions (in tCO2-eq/year).
- Investments in sustainable energy (energy efficiency and renewable energy) triggered by the project (cumulative, in million Euro).
The impacts of the proposals should be demonstrated during the project and within 5 years after the project lifetime.
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Expected results
Proposals should establish and operate regional/national facilitation structures, for example one-stop-shops, to accelerate the renovation wave in the public sector (e.g. office buildings, social housing, schools, leisure facilities etc.) covering a larger territory and offering to public authorities a comprehensive, all-inclusive service from technical, financial to legal advice, procurement and quality assurance of works.
Actions should clearly focus on the ambitious energy renovation of existing public buildings (e.g. administrative buildings, hospitals, schools) to nZEB or ZEB standards, and should target legal entities operating under public law (e.g. public authorities, public bodies, social/public rental housing operators, etc.) as the main final beneficiaries of the services to be put in place.
Proposals should describe the services that will be developed and offered to public authorities, which should include:
- Reduction of complexity and simplified decision making for public authorities to stimulate demand for building renovation and energy performance improvements.
- Proactive outreach to public authorities and identification of public buildings for energy renovations.
- Renovation of buildings to nZEB and ZEB standards in line with the revised EED.
- Provision of legal assistance to facilitate and prioritise the aggregation of building renovation projects (belonging to one or several public entities) with the aim to upscale overall renovation and attract private investors.
- Development of efficient procurement processes ensuring that renovations are delivered at pace, enabling the bundling/upscaling of renovation projects and ensuring high quality of renovation works as well as facilitating the use of energy performance contracting and third-party financing mechanisms on a long-term contractual basis.
- Financial engineering support to facilitate the use of financial instruments and market-based instruments such as Energy Performance Contracts, refinancing models, Green/White Certificates, energy efficiency obligation schemes, energy efficiency as a service, and to increase blended finance of public and private sources and uptake of EU funding sources such as InvestEU, Recovery and Resilient Facility and EU Cohesion Policy funds including REACT-EU and Just Transition Mechanism.
- Systematic collection, aggregation and assessment of energy related public buildings data for informing local, regional or national policy developments and reporting.
Proposals should clearly describe how they will achieve long-term sustainability of the facilitation structure. For example, this could include a clear outline of a sustainability strategy, business plan and/or dedicated tasks in the proposed work plan to that effect.
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Eligibility Criteria
Regions / countries for funding
Moldova (Moldova), Iceland (Ísland), North Macedonia (Северна Македонија), Ukraine (Україна)
eligible entities
Education and training institution, International organization, Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) / Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Other, Private institution, incl. private company (private for profit), Public Body (national, regional and local; incl. EGTCs), Research Institution incl. University, Small and medium-sized enterprise (SME)
Mandatory partnership
No
Project Partnership
Proposals may be submitted by a single applicant or by applicants from a single eligible country.
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- be legal entities (public or private bodies)
- be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
- non-EU countries:
- listed EEA countries and countries associated to the LIFE Programme (associated countries) or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature (list of participating countries)
- the coordinator must be established in an eligible country
Entities from other countries (not listed above) are exceptionally eligible, if the granting authority considers their participation essential for the implementation of the action (see work programme).
Natural persons are NOT eligible (with the exception of self-employed persons, i.e. sole traders, where the company does not have legal personality separate from that of the natural person).
International organisations are eligible. The rules on eligible countries do not apply to them.
EU bodies (with the exception of the European Commission Joint Research Centre) can NOT be part of the consortium.
Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.
other eligibility criteria
Financial support to third parties is not allowed under Call LIFE-2024-CET except for topic LIFE-2024-CET-SAP.
Additional information
Topics
Relevance for EU Macro-Region
EUSAIR - EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region, EUSALP - EU Strategy for the Alpine Space, EUSBSR - EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, EUSDR - EU Strategy for the Danube Region
UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs)
Additional Information
Proposals must be submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Portal Electronic Submission System (accessible via the Topic page in the Search Funding & Tenders section. Paper submissions are NOT possible.
Proposals must be complete and contain all the requested information and all required annexes and supporting documents:
- Application Form Part A — contains administrative information about the participants (future coordinator, beneficiaries and affiliated entities) and the summarised budget for the project (to be filled in directly online)
- Application Form Part B — contains the technical description of the project (to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded)
- Part C (to be filled in directly online) — contains additional project data and the project’s contribution to EU programme key performance indicators
- mandatory annexes and supporting documents (templates available to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed, assembled and re-uploaded):
- detailed budget table (mandatory Excel template available in the Submission System)
- participant information including previous projects, if any (mandatory template available in the Submission System)
- for topic LIFE-2024-CET-PDA: table of investments (mandatory template available in the Submission System)
- optional annexes: letters of support
Proposals are limited to maximum 65 pages (Part B).
Call documents
LIFE-2024-CETLIFE-2024-CET(1462kB)
Contact
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