About
HORIS – Home Renovation Integrated Services, a project funded by the European LIFE programme, will update and advance an existing digital retrofitting platform called Green Menu (already available in Portugal by DGG and FCT NOVA). In addition, the HORIS project will build on the success of established tools like the ‘Self Scan’ developed by De Groene Grachten or Solutions4renovation by the Turnkey Retrofit project.
HORIS will create a digital one-stop-shop (OSS) with the aim of empowering homeowners (of several building types, including flats) during the home renovation process. Homeowners face several key barriers when deciding to retrofit their properties, such as uncertainty and lack of trust about reported energy savings. In addition, they also must choose a home renovation professional and navigate the complexities of the financial process.
The OSS/ Green Menu will:
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- Focus on helping homeowners make decisions on improving energy efficiency; renewable energy solutions and identify support to reduce energy poverty.
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- Simplify the home renovation process – by providing homeowners with relevant and credible information and helping them identify the best and most sustainable options.
By offering financial, legal and technical solutions, HORIS will facilitate a smooth customer journey, offering homeowners support on finding renovation professionals and guidance about financial schemes. HORIS will match financing, legal and regulatory, and technical solutions with specific building typologies and homeowners’ needs to streamline action for home renovation, developing standardised contractual arrangements for home renovation.
For whom?
The project will engage with small and medium sized stakeholders, including local and regional public authorities and non-profit organisations and establish a network of approved home renovation service providers.
Initially, the OSS will be set up in Italy, Spain and Portugal with the ambition of replicating in additional countries if needed.
HORIS will focus on 3 different types of homeowners:
HORIS will help overcome 3 main typical barriers blocking home renovation decision:
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- Administrative, offering the management of work permits and report, assess, manage and process the bonuses and subsidies from which citizens can benefit from.
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- Technical, advising homeowners on how they can improve their home and have access to lists/rankings/ratings of trusted and validated professionals to ensure a service of the highest quality on a given time.
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- Financial, helping to find the right solutions available in the market and accompany the consumer in the management of subsidies and tax credits, also giving access to affordable financing.
HORIS, by generating multiple social, environmental, and economic benefits, is a unique opportunity for climate neutrality.
Project Objectives
The overall objective of the HORIS project is to empower homeowners to make informed decisions when renovating. To achieve this aim, a digital One-Stop Shop will be developed to simplify the process and guide homeowners to pick the best available services, based on their individual situation.
HORIS will:
- Improve energy efficiency in residential buildings and reduce energy poverty by setting up an OSS for Integrated Home Renovation Services, run by consumer organisations.
- Develop a digital OSS that delivers a high-quality user experience and simplifies the home renovation process.
- Encourage international collaboration and innovation by creating a network of home renovation practitioners to help consumers rebuild their homes energy efficiently.
- Provide training to professionals in the implementation of home renovation measures and raise industry standards by highlighting the best practitioners.
- Establish a sustainable business model that offers renovation service providers incentives to use the OSS to promote their services.
- Build trust towards the OSS by promoting clear accountability, quality assurance and dedicated consumer protection policies.
- Communicate and disseminate project outcomes.
What will homeowners gain from using the platforms?
On top of quality assurance and guarantees for the entire renovation process to pick the right measures, professionals and financing tools, the platform will be available in national languages (Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) and be tailored to the market needs.
For homeowners, the focus of the value proposition will be on comfort, wellbeing, health, social, environmental, and economic benefits.
HORIS will connect consumers to network actors, such as construction companies, architects, engineers and financial consultants.
HORIS will provide the following:
- Independent and trustworthy information about “what” are the best technical solutions, financing schemes, and legal procedures to mainstream energy renovation for residential homeowners.
- Tailored advice about “how to” renovate depending on products and services available on the market and on the homeowners’ building typology
- Select the “who” will be the right and qualified professional who will do the work, including training the professionals about legislative updates and standards.
- Support to calculate “how much” will it cost and whether there are subsidies to implement the solutions provided within standardized contract types.
- Scale up by typology of homes and target audience thanks to the valuable partners network and beneficiaries of OSS themselves who will become ambassadors.
What will providers gain from being on the platforms?
Professionals will benefit from the trust homeowners put into consumer organisations (the platforms will be hosted by the 3 HORIS consumer organisations) and be offered training for the implementation of home renovation measures. That will allow highlighting the best companies and raising industry standards.
The platform(s)
The One-Stop Shop explained
When it comes to finding information about home renovation (different products, service providers, financial support) consumers are often unsure of where to go and what sources to trust. The idea behind the One-Stop Shop concept is to create an online platform where consumers can get their questions answered. By designing a user-friendly and engaging platform, the OSS will seek to improve consumer confidence in the home renovation market.
The Green Menu OSS will:
- Adapt and add new features from existing platforms in Portugal and the Netherlands.
- Develop a validation and rating method for companies, services, and products in the renovation sector.
- Integrate existing validation schemes
- Map the legal and regulatory environment for home renovation in each country to assess key steps and bottlenecks
- Compile detailed technical solutions for home renovation by country to define optimized packages of renovation measures
- Integrate an extensive database of public and private financing schemes available for home renovation and specific energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions in each country (public financing encompassing soft loans, grants, revolving funds, tax incentives, among other solutions and private financing schemes will also be compiled and detailed, including targeted bank loans, energy performance contracts (usually provided by energy service companies – ESCOs), on-bill financing, among other solutions)
- Involve consumers organisations in the design process.
Technology
In 2019, De Groene Grachten developed an online database containing information about sustainable renovation for historic buildings in the Netherlands. Currently, 55 municipalities and 3 provinces are part of the Green Menu network in the Netherlands.
HORIS will update and advance an existing digital retrofitting platform called Green Menu , designed by Dutch project partner De Groene Grachten and already available in Portugal (by DGG and FCT NOVA). Additional tools and platforms such as Solutions4renovation by the Turnkey Retrofit project will be leveraged to fine tune a platform fitting perfectly the market needs.
HORIS will develop Green Retrofitting Menu platforms for the Italian and Spanish context that enable consumers to improve energy efficiency of the houses and reducing the energy poverty of buildings and adapt the Green Retrofitting Menu of Portugal, expanding the menu for specific building typologies and types of consumers, including condominium households and energy-poor households.
Self-Scan
An online tool that provides decision-making support for building owners. Designed for various building typologies (homes, heritage buildings, museums, among others), it includes specific information about sustainable renovation measures, costs and savings estimations, financing schemes, and local legislation. Self Scan
Reports presenting the tools
- D5.1 – Country-specific online Green Retrofitting Menu’s
- D5.2 – Country-specific online SelfScan Tool
Project reports and outputs
HORIS communication material
Reports
Please note that the following publications are still subject to the European Commission’s approval.
- D3.1 – Existing OSS lessons learned (July 2024, GNE Finance)
- D2.2 – Quality assurance scheme (February 2025, BUREAU VERITAS)
- D3.4 – Renovation packages definition (November 2024, INEGI)
- D4.1 – Reports on financing schemes, legal and regulatory aspects, and technical measures for Portugal, Spain, and Italy (September 2024, NOVA)
- D4.2 – Standardised contractual arrangements for home renovation (February 2025, , BUREAU VERITAS)
Please note that the project reports will be added as they are published, along the project life.
- D2.1 – Numbers of actors present in the network
- D2.3 – Training modules
- D3.5 – Replicability plan
- D4.3 – Update Standardised contractual arrangements for home renovation
- D6.1 – Report on web communities
- D6.2 – Report on evaluation of the consumers satisfaction
- D6.3 – UX assessment of the digital one stop shop
- D7.4 – Policy recommendations
- D7.5 – Final publishable report
- D7.6 – Update Communication & dissemination activities report
Advisory Board
The LIFE HORIS Board will support the project by providing feedback and ideas to the work done by the 10 partners in the next 2 years, to enhance and develop a digital retrofitting platform called Green Menu. The Board members represent various sectors and stakeholders that are key for the project, they include building professionals’ confederations and alliances, research and standardisation organisations, and more. They will provide independent feedback to the project team, and bring in external experience, examples and best practices.
Board members are:
- Blanca Gomez, from CNI Instaladores y mantenedores (Spain).
- Catarina Serra and Nuno Simões, Itecons, Institute for research and technological development in construction, energy, environment and sustainability (Portugal).
- Adrian Joyce, Secretary General of EuroACE, the EU Alliance of companies for energy efficiency in buildings + Renovate Europe campaign. (Belgium)
- Giulia Linfozzi, Assotermica, representing the producers of heating systems (Italy).
- Marco Degregorio, technical officer and project manager in UNI, the Italian standardisation body (Italy).
- Joao Gomes, ANFAJE, National association of efficient windows producers (Portugal).
- Nuno Climaco, Lisboa E-Nova, Lisbon energy and environment agency (Portugal).
- GBCE (Spain).
- I-Com, Institute for competitiveness (Italy).
Related projects
With HORIS, we set up a group of sister projects working on OSSs, willing to organise joint events, write briefings, etc. Do not hesitate to write to us if you are interested to join our monthly calls: marine (at) ieecp.org
The #OSS4RenovationCluster: a group of sister projects unite to form a home renovation supergroup to speed up Europe’s Renovation Wave.
The projects, funded by the LIFE and Horizon EU programmes, are joining forces to help support citizens in home renovation. Most are working on innovative solutions such as one-stop-shops to support consumers through each step of the renovation process.
The new generation of OSS (One Stop Shops) projects are key to learn from each other and existing projects, the group meet in monthly calls, to share updates and exchange knowledge in energy-efficient building renovation.
Some of the key challenges they will experience:
– Engaging homeowners
– Getting professionals to register their services on the platform and ensure quality of the services provided
– Developing a sustainable business model after the project ends
– Fostering cooperation between the key stakeholders
Read a blog about the work done by those projects.
See below a graphic developed highlighting learning points from developing one-stop-shops.
Past projects
- I-HEROS
- DUMUS PROGRAMME
- PROPEL Project
- SAVE THE HOMES
- PRORETRO
- TURNKEY-RETROFIT and SOLUTIONS4RENOVATION
