The new RENOVERTY report, together with the financial database tool, presents an overview of policy and financing mechanisms dedicated to home renovation that are available within the pilot countries of the LIFE project (Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Portugal, Spain) and that are relevant to the implementation of Rural Energy Efficiency Roadmaps (REERs) within the project.
The research shows that there are quite vast differences in terms of the availability of adequate funding between pilot areas, despite a common European framework. This is because the adoption of national policies on alleviating energy poverty are far from universal. In some pilot areas, there is financing of up to 100% available if the applicants fulfil certain criteria in terms of their affectedness by energy poverty. On the other hand, there are pilot areas where hardly any to no funding is currently available. While other instruments like low interest credits may be available in some of those countries, these instruments might be of little help for households which already have a very limited budget. Therefore, unless substantial funding is available in each of the pilot areas, the implementation of renovation measures might only be possible in a very uncomprehensive manner. Furthermore, many of the investigated financial instruments have a limited timeframe within which homeowners may apply, requiring a lot of resources to inform potential recipients and keep them up to date on possible changes of the terms and conditions.
The report comes together with the RENOVERTY financial database, that consists of a user friendly Excel sheet giving an overview of the funding schemes available in the RENOVERTY seven countries and allows the user to filter by different criteria. The added value of this tool is that it will be regularly updated throughout the framework of the project, closing at the end of 2025.
In conclusion, while the European Commission has made efforts to include considerations of energy poverty in all the directives, programmes and fundings associated with the Grean Deal, there is at the moment only very limited targeted funding available in the pilot areas of the RENOVERTY project. However, once Member States submit their national Social Climate Plans to unlock funding available through the Social Climate Fund by June 2025, we could see a significant improvement to the funding coverage of renovation activities for people affected by energy poverty.
