Webinars

On November 3rd our EU Level Supporting Partner Climate Strategy & Partners hold a webinar to launch its latest report concerning the European Renovation Loan (ERL).

Combining existing financial elements and components and joining them together in a new instrument designed to deliver finance at the EU Renovation Wave scale, the ERL has the potential to fill the private financing gap and address over 50 million EU homeowners.

The report aims at tackling three key elements:

• Identifying the right 50 million homeowners.
• Designing the EU Renovation Loan to fill the identified gap.
• Implementing the right enabling framework to ensure ERL’s success.

Reducing energy demand is the sustainable answer to protect citizens against rising energy prices. To deliver on massive energy renovation programmes required to secure such energy-saving gains we need a much greater focus on workforce upskilling. This session, co-organised by Renovate Europe, E3G and the EFBWW, will focus on the needs of today’s workforce in terms of building renovations and will highlight funding opportunities in the multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2021-2027 to help regions and cities step up to the challenge.

Moderator: Adrian Joyce, Director of the Renovate Europe Campaign

Speakers:

• Luis Galiano Bastarrica, Policy Assistant for Climate and Energy Policies at DG REGIO G.1 “Smart and Sustainable Growth”
• Rolf Gehring, Political Secretary of the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW)
• Vilislava Ivanova, Senior Researcher at E3G

A trained workforce and skilled public administration will be essential to support the drive to a highly energy efficient building stock, in line with EU climate neutrality goals. This 90-minute online conversation, that we co-organised with Energy Cities (representing the Interreg MED Efficient Buildings Community) and EFBWW, informs EU, national and regional stakeholders on how to maximise current opportunities to increase the availability of a qualified workforce for energy renovations, particularly for public buildings.

It looks at the importance of skills and training as a pre-requisite for rolling out successful renovation schemes on the ground. We explore how to make the most of the Multi-Annual Financial Framework 2021-2027 for upskilling workers as well as local stakeholders and administration with the aim of boosting the rate and depth of energy renovation, particularly in the Mediterranean area (Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Slovenia and Spain).

Agenda

Welcome – Miriam Eisermann, Energy Cities

Panel 1: EU-level perspectives and opportunities on skills and training for energy renovation

• Introduction: Why workforce upskilling is so important to deliver renovation schemes – Adrian Joyce, Renovate Europe Campaign
• Opportunities to boost skills in energy renovation through the Multi-Annual Financial Framework and Just Transition Fund (JTF) – Maeva Roulette, DG EMPL
• Needs, challenges and opportunities for upskilling the construction workforce on energy renovation – Rolf Gehring, EFBWW
• Insights from CINEA – Luca Angelino, CINEA
• Q&A moderated by Adrian Joyce, Renovate Europe Campaign

Panel II: Upskilling of local stakeholders and administration for better buildings

• Introduction – Miriam Eisermann, Energy Cities
• Strengthening planning and management skills of public building owners
  • Belinda Gottardi, Mayor of Castello Maggiore (Italy)
  • Evangelos Evangelides, Mayor of Aradippou (Cyprus)
  • Helder Gonçalves, Director of Portuguese National Energy Laboratory LNGE and national coordinator of BUILD UP Skills FORESEE
• Q&A moderated by Peter Schilken, Energy Cities

Wrap-up – Adrian Joyce, Renovate Europe Campaign

End

The Renovate Europe Campaign and Positive Money Europe co-organised the webinar “How to unlock the Renovation Wave” on the occasion of the launch of the Unlock campaign. The event took place online on Wednesday, May 11th from 11am to 12.15am CEST.

The current recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings directive (EPBD) proposes comprehensive measures to accelerate energy efficient renovation of residential buildings. However, financing the Renovation Wave remains a complex challenge. The Commission expects a funding gap of around € 275 billion per year by 2030. Public funding for renovation purposes is often too slow to deploy, too bureaucratic, and not scalable enough due to the magnitude of the challenge.

ECB research estimates that around € 214 billion/year of the needed additional funding should be covered by bank loans. The text reviewed by the Commission rightly emphasised the role of energy efficiency loans and mortgages in the Renovation Wave by introducing the concept of Mortgage Portfolio Standard. However, banks lack incentives to offer cheap lending products.

What role can the banking sector play in the Renovation Wave? How can the European Central Bank unlock affordable green loans and green mortgages? Our experts answered these questions during the online webinar.

– Adrian Joyce (Renovate Europe) will present on the current state of play of the renovation challenge;
– Peter Sweatman (Climate Strategy) will introduce the EU renovation loan;
– Uuriintuya Batsaikhan (Positive Money Europe) will show how the ECB can finance home renovations through its refinancing operations and TLTROs programme.

A discussion with Member of the EU Parliament Sean Kelly, EU Commission’s Karlis Goldstein, and Jennifer Johnson from the European Mortgage Federation followed with a dedicated space for questions.

The event closed with Vicky Van Eyck (Positive Money Europe) introducing the Unlock campaign.

21^th March 2022 (11:30-12:50 CET)

The Renovate Europe Campaign hosted the webinar “One-Stop-Shops: Maximising their potential to accelerate energy renovation” on Monday 21 March 2022 (11:30-12:50 CET) via GoToWebinar.

In a context of rising energy prices and a spiralling climate crisis, reducing the energy demand of Europe’s leaky buildings is a priority. Technical assistance provided by One-Stop-Shops (OSS) has long been advocated as part of the solution to accelerating building energy renovation in the EU. Maximising their potential will be crucial if we are to boost the deep renovation of the EU building stock in order to increase our energy security and cut households’ energy bills.

One-stop-shops also have an important role to play in supporting the introduction of Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) in the Buildings Directive (EPBD) and in driving the take-up of renovation measures implemented through the National Recovery and Resilience Plans, Cohesion and other EU funding as well as public programmes.

In this webinar, the Hungarian, Irish, Latvian and Polish National Partners of the Renovate Europe Campaign together with a representative from the City of Warsaw presented their experience with one-stop-shops in their country. At the same time, Adrien Bullier from the Commission’s CINEA provided insight into why and how we need to upscale OSS with the aim of boosting the rate and depth of energy renovation in the EU.

Agenda

11:30 | Introduction and Moderation
Julie Kjestrup, Vice-Chair of the Renovate Europe Campaign

11:40 | Towards large-scale roll out of “integrated home renovation services” in Europe
Adrien Bullier, Senior Project Adviser, European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA)

11:50 | Learnings from the RenoPont Energy Home Renovation Centres in Budapest
Zsuzsanna Koritár, Hungarian Energy Efficiency Institute (MEHI) (REC National Partner in Hungary)

12:00 | EUROPA Network: the establishment of the Latvian One-Stop-Shop
Eloise Stancioff, Ekubirojs (REC National Partner in Latvia)

12:10 | The Irish One-Stop-Shop experience through the Solutions4Renovation platform
Johanna Varghese, Irish Green Building Council (REC National Partner in Ireland)

12:20 | Challenges to boosting the renovation of single and multi-family homes in Poland: the role of One-Stop-Shops
– Justyna Glusman, Fala Renowacji (REC National Partner in Poland)
– Jacek Kisiel (Deputy Director, Air Protection and Climate Policy Department, City of Warsaw)

12:30 | Q&A with speakers

12:45 | Wrap-up

12:50 | End of the webinar