CitizEE H2020 Project Launched
Energy efficiency Financing - 24 July 2019
Scaling up Public Sustainable Investments via Citizen Financing Schemes
CitizEE is a new Coordiantion and Support Action at European level, funded under the Horizon 2020 programme. The project has been launched in May 2019, with a kick-off meeting held by WIP Renewable Energies in its facilities in Munich (Germany), on May 7th-8th. The meeting gathered the 8 partners forming the consortium and served as starting point for the CitizEE project
The main objective of CitizEE is to support European public authorities to scale up funding for energy efficiency in the building sector through attracting citizen private investments.
CitizEE will address this objective by integrating tailored and widely adopted crowdfunding and cooperative financing schemes with adequate available or to be developed Public Financing Instruments (PFIs). As a result, CitizEE will enable to set up large-scale community energy efficiency programs while strengthening know-how of regional/national key stakeholders.
CitizEE innovation strategy project is conceived to support public authorities in a twofold purpose:
- Setting up Citizen Investment Platforms with respect to specific regulatory and market conditions of each pilot region/country bringing together all market players: citizens, associations and economic actors in their territory. These platforms will act as an advisory body with a strong focus on maximizing the interaction with Investment Platforms under the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) and complying with the rules for operating such Investment Platforms according to the “EFSI Regulation”, 2015/1017.
- Integrating crowdfunding and cooperative financing mechanisms within their public funding policy, programs and processes dedicated to energy efficiency by assessing CFs4EE Financing Schemes (Citizen models pooled with PFI) viability for upscaling energy efficiency investment programs.
To this end, among other activities, a detailed analysis of the different aspects and challenges surrounding crowdfunding and cooperative funding models will be ongoing throughout the project. This will be supported with benchmark study of existing and addressable Public Financing Instruments in order to implement optimal financing schemes for energy efficiency in the funding of global projects and/or large-scale programs. This will be completed with the development of policy recommendations for improving the framework and market conditions for target countries and at European level.
In addition, four demonstrators have been selected to show the replication possibilities of the project financing schemes proposed. The cases have been selected considering the following: (i) geographical representation across the European Union (Portugal, Belgium, Croatia and Lithuania). (ii) their commitment to invest in energy efficiency savings in buildings and established strategies to implement them in different market segments (adequate financing remains however a real barrier). (iii) various level of maturity in the development of the citizen financing market.
Furthermore, a strong exploitation strategy including capacity building activities will be carried out. The goal will be to deliver specific training to regional/national stakeholders and to promote the outcomes and replication potential of the schemes developed. Already a large number of individuals are expected to be trained within the project duration. In addition, CitizEE will gather regional/national stakeholders in working groups. Overall, the group discussions will target the integration of standardised citizen financing by kick-starting the Citizen Investment Platforms. Key role of these platforms will be to support the deployment of large-scale energy efficiency.
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