The European Community for Integrated Home Renovation Services: officially launched at the EU Peers Summit on 11 June in Brussels

More than 70 one-stop shops for home energy renovation and their supporters met in Brussels on 11 June 2024 at the 1^st EU Peers Summit, officially launching the European community which enables them to learn, exchange knowledge, gain visibility and advocate their cause.

The European Union wants to achieve a zero-emission building stock by 2050 and local one-stop shops (OSS) for home energy renovation are key to achieving this target. According to the recently adopted Energy Efficiency Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, Member States will need to roll out one OSS for every 80,000 inhabitants or at least one per region to accompany homeowners, including those living in energy poverty and vulnerable households, on their renovation journey. 

Hundreds of OSS are already operating all over Europe but many more are needed - 4000 to 5000 OSS if we were to have 1 OSS per 80,000 inhabitants in the near future. More than 70 pioneer OSS and their supporters gathered at the 1^st EU Peers Summit on 11 June 2024 in Brussels to launch their new European Community of Practice, named EU Peers. Its objective is to strengthen and upscale the Integrated Home Renovation Services movement in Europe.

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 “Renovation should be feasible for everyone.”

Stefan Moser, Head of Unit Products & Buildings at the European Commission, opened the discussion by saying that one-stop shops’ link to local authorities and their urban planning is crucial. “Renovation should be feasible for everyone. Each of us should be able to find someone to talk to, someone who can come to our house to advise us, someone who will manage the whole renovation process for us and someone who will help us to finance it… OSS are there to help people to overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed, the fear of the challenge (energy renovation) that is lying in front of us individually.”  This is what OSS are doing – they offer integrated home renovation services that make the complex renovation process more simple and accessible - hence attractive - to all homeowners.

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“We want people to go for deep renovation. For this, we need their trust, we need to be close to them, close to their house.”

Six local and regional OSS from Hungary, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain showed how they are meeting the same homeowners’ needs with different one-stop shop models, public or private. The challenges they face are very similar from one country to another:

#Creating trust

“We want to involve people in deep renovation. For this, we need their trust, we need to be close to them, close to their house.” said Alice Morcrette, Director of Hauts-de-France Pass Rénovation (France), emphasising the importance of setting up local or regional OSS that are physically close to citizens.

Creating trust also involves reliable and independent technical and financial advice, which is, ideally, offered to homeowners for free or for an acceptable fee. The social dimension is as important as the technical aspects. Here, public authorities have an important role to play as such advice could be considered as public service (this is already the case in France).  

OSS are also an excellent tool for boosting the local renovation market and for creating local jobs. This was the main reason why the Pass Rénovation OSS was created in Hauts-de-France region. And it worked, although educating local companies is not always easy. “Trust is also about companies that do the work and, often, they do not want to change their practices”, admitted Alice Morcrette. France Raulo from EnergieCentrale in Ghent (Belgium) added: “Everything we do should take into account the citizens’ perspective.” 

#Unstable and unclear policy framework

Karen Smets, coordinator of Dubolimburg recognised that the policy framework in the Province of Limburg, and in Belgium in general, is not yet ideal: “The policy framework, including available subsidies or conditions to access renovation loans, is not clear and  stable enough. The economic conditions are changing over time and this makes the estimations of savings and profitability of investments difficult. It is impossible to set up an operation in such conditions.” Károly Oelberg from AACM Central Europe (Hungary) thinks that also “inconsistencies in funding schemes should be eliminated.”

# Gathering and monitoring of data 

OSS are monitoring the data related to energy renovation projects to be able to estimate as precisely as possible homeowners’ energy and financial savings or the increase of their property value after the renovation. However, better access to reliable and verified data gathered at national or European level would facilitate this task. 

# Access to affordable and long-term financing

As Emilio Miguel Mitre from EOS Energy (Energy Service Company) in Spain put it: “Financing is only part of the solution but an essential part of the solution”.  We need new technical and financial models to be able to give access to energy renovation to all citizens, including those suffering from energy poverty and vulnerable households. One of the game changers could be that we change our vision of energy renovation and we stop considering it as a cost but rather as an investment. “In Ghent, we have estimated that every euro invested in OSS brings 16 euro back to the local economy. Thanks to the support from the European Investment Bank, we have already advised more than 17,000 households!” said France Raulo from EnergieCentrale in Ghent (Belgium).

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“Let’s imagine that the OSS network operates alike a network of Job Agencies”

The National Energy Agency of Portugal, Flemish Energy Agency (Belgium), Energy Agency of the Basque Government (Spain), European Builders Confederation and International Union of Property Owners, shared their views on how the one-stop shop movement could be strengthened and upscaled. These organisations are already actively supporting OSS in their adventures and are planning to share their stories and ideas with EU Peers. If we had to pick only one of them, it could be the idea of Roel Vermeiren from the Flemish Energy Agency: “Let’s imagine that the OSS network operates as a network of Job Agencies: its services are available nearly everywhere, every homeowner has a personal file with personalised support, access to training and follow up.”

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Join the Community now!

The EU Peers Community of Practice is now officially open to its future members – OSS and their supporters! You are all welcome to join and to steer these ideas, to share your best (and less good) practices, to mutualise your data, tools and analysis that could help your peers to do their work better, to increase your visibility and to advocate collectively for more (and more efficient) OSS because European homeowners need you now!

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>> Learn more about how to become a member here.

>> We would love to get to know you better: answer the online survey mapping IHRS providers & supporters in Europe!

>> Take a look at the pictures from the event here.

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