Innovative Practices
LEMON Project - Italy
The LEMON project was developed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight energy poverty through the energy conversion of existing social housing. It focuses on increasing the energy efficiency of buildings while looking to improve housing quality. LEMON works on a portion of the social housing building stock of the Emilia-Romagna region, with the ambition to become a replicable best case for the entire region and other European countries.
ORFEE Project - France
ORFEE (Office for Renovations and Financing for Energy Efficiency) is a European H2020-funded project that developped the first four French third-party financing companies. Its objectives are to strengthen their activity as technical and financial assemblers for the renovation of residential buildings and:
- Respond to the need for supporting households in carrying out energy-efficient renovations
- Accelerate the financing through third party financing. Through the implementation of the ORFEE project, 7 third party financing companies have recently been created by French Regional and Metropolitan Councils.
BABLE Solutions: Smart Cities - Europe
To provide effective electric vehicles and charging stations for cities, the BABLE project created their Investment package for Smart Cities (ISC) tool, which offers cities an innovative financing instrument that simplifies the process in looking to implement sustainable and smart urban solutions. The scheme will initially focus on urban electric fleet procurement and financing. The ultimate goal is to develop a digital tool that will coordinate investment solutions by screening the market for suppliers of EVs and related infrastructure, coordinating options for packaged solution bundles, providing support in acquiring capital/financing and closing the transactions.
Streetlight OesteLED IP, Oeste Region - Portugal
The OesteLED streetlighting ESCO project was implemented in 12 municipalities that constitute an Intermunicipal Community, a NUT III region in Portugal, with a population of approximately 365,000 inhabitants.
The main goal of the project was to improve efficiency in street lighting. It was one of the largest LED projects in the world, and the biggest in Portugal as well as a pioneer in the intermunicipal financing model, reducing electricity bills by more than €6,6 million at 2022 electricity costs.
Aradippou - Cyprus
Aradippou’s solution was an initiative from the city council including the technoeconomic support of the EU Affairs Advisor of the Municipality. Under the scheme envisaged by the municipality, citizens will be rewarded for their solar PV investments by receiving payments on a municipality coordinated credit card called the “Oxygen Rewards Card”.
The purpose of the card is to link local citizens’ PV investments, and the associated emissions reductions, with actors purchasing carbon offsets on compliance or voluntary carbon markets. It would ideally become a permanent municipal service through its One-Stop-Shop with reductions in CO2 emissions regularly reported and verified by local energy auditors.
REMOURBAN: Incentives for e-mobility in Valladolid- Spain
The REMOURBAN project focuses on the welfare of citizens within the sustainability framework of a smart city and aimed to develop and validate a number of innovative technologies plus organisational and economic solutions to meet the needs of the energy, mobility and ICT sectors. The sustainable mobility initiative implementation used a framework agreement to get the data required by EU funding and to enable monitoring of electric vehicle use and user experience.