New cooperation models for SMEs to scale up deep energy efficient renovations

Introduction

The project COSME Reno is focused on promoting and advancing energy renovation efforts, particularly in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector. Its primary goals include accelerating the pace and effectiveness of energy renovations, ensuring higher-quality retrofit projects, minimizing the performance gap, and implementing industrialized solutions. COSME Reno encompasses activities in several countries, namely France (FR), Netherlands (NL), Italy (IT), Lithuania (LT), Belgium (BE), and Germany (DE).

Background

COSME Reno aims at bridging and building on existing initiatives, including those of the EU transnational open-source movement “EnergieSprong,” which supports the price decrease of deep energy retrofit solutions using prefab elements. Such efforts have been started in social housing in NL, have scaled up in FR and DE, started in BE and IT, and could, with this proposal, also be activated in LT.

Objectives

COSME Reno proposes to support industrial development (innovative techniques) to address the challenge of renovating more, with higher performance and at a more affordable cost (best practice), while still being accessible for SMEs. The renovation value chain needs to dare to industrialize itself. For full-integrated major renovations, three key industrial solutions seen as “component solutions” are needed: they are industrialized prefab products that will remain on the building for decades.

Market Barriers

The project relies on solving existing strong market barriers by bringing a set of efficient and open-source tools and services, combined with efficient training for the different SMEs to use those tools, as well as experimenting with the implementation of prefab-labs.

Specific Objectives

The specific objectives of COSME Reno are as follows:

1. Develop better cooperation tools and create a SME tooling academy: This objective aims to enhance collaboration among SMEs involved in energy renovation projects. It involves the development of improved tools and resources to facilitate cooperation and knowledge sharing. Additionally, the project seeks to establish a SME tooling academy, which would likely serve as a training and capacity-building platform for SMEs engaged in deep energy retrofit initiatives.

2. Activate shared investment and partnership capacities for SMEs involved in deep energy retrofit: This objective focuses on promoting shared investment and partnership opportunities for SMEs participating in deep energy retrofit projects. By facilitating collaboration and pooling resources, the project aims to enhance the capacity of SMEs to undertake energy renovation activities and achieve more impactful results.

3. Leverage new financing and warranty tools for deep energy retrofits: COSME Reno aims to explore and utilize innovative financing and warranty mechanisms specifically designed for deep energy retrofit projects. By identifying and implementing new tools in this area, the project aims to overcome financial barriers associated with energy renovation and increase the certainty of energy savings. These mechanisms may involve novel financing models, warranty schemes, or other financial instruments tailored to support deep energy retrofits.