Bankable Neighbourhood Portfolios for Energy Renovation

Introduction

If Europe is to meet its ambitious 2030 and 2050 climate neutrality goals, there is a pressing need for the rapid scale-up of energy efficiency renovations in the built environment, which represents 36% of greenhouse gas emissions. The Renovation Wave has established the goal of doubling the renovation rate by 2030, but critical financial barriers stand in the way.

Financial Barriers

To tackle this, existing EU and national public funds must be utilized in a more optimal manner to leverage incremental private finance to address the €275 billion annual investment gap in the built environment through to 2030.

Project Overview

The Bankable Neighbourhood Portfolios for Energy Renovation (BanPER) project aims to contribute to accelerating the rollout of energy efficiency renovation for privately-owned residential homes through the implementation of an innovative neighbourhood-based, portfolio approach: a Neighbourhood Energy Efficiency Scheme.

Just Transition

Energy poor homes will form a core part of this approach to ensure a just transition. This will be underpinned by a blended finance mechanism to use public funding to catalyse incremental private funding. The expected cumulative impact 5 years after the project is the use of €123 million of existing public subsidies to leverage another €123 million of incremental investments.

Implementation Strategy

To achieve this impact, BanPER will develop the initial Neighbourhood Energy Efficiency Scheme in Marseille that can become a blueprint for replicability in other Member States. It will operate on three levels:

1. Project preparation at the neighbourhood level.
2. Development of the enabling infrastructure at the city level.
3. Promotion of the innovative approach beyond Marseille.

Engagement and Replication

The innovative approach will be promoted ‘Beyond Marseille’ by first engaging with French Financial Institutions and then broader EU stakeholders. Replication and effective exploitation of project results will also be facilitated by the development of a unique multi-parametric data framework that can form the basis for scaling retrofit approaches.