Prototyping of evidence-based tools for one-stop-shops
One-Stop-Shops or municipal climate centers are a crucial place where digital tools can support climate protection by citizens and significantly increase the rate and depth of retrofitting. The module is currently in preparation with the CO2COMPASS network and VIADUKT GmbH (prototype construction from 2022).
CO2COMPASS: Municipal climate centers for building carbon neutrality supported by local citizenship and economy.
The CO2COMPASS-program is currently developing approaches in which digital tools for evidence-based climate protection support one-stop stores as municipal climate centers.
CO2COMPASS climate centers shall act as the central contact to provide independent and technology-neutral advice with reliable information on costs and emissions. The task of the OSS is to empower the citizens as well as the municipality employees to realize the reconstruction of all buildings within the municipality according to the collectively set targets.
To this end, they provide expertise and coordinate civil society involvement. In Europe, there is already experience with OSS offerings. OSS operators are often public bodies, industry, energy service providers, intermediaries, cooperatives or stores with an OSS department.
The background is the implementation of European and national strategies
Directive (EU) 2018/844 (see Directive 2010/31/EU) on the energy performance of buildings introduces the concept of the One-Stop-Shop (OSS) in relation to the definition of a long-term renovation strategy. The directive includes the obligation for member states to facilitate access to appropriate mechanisms for project bundling, mitigating the perceived risk of energy efficiency measures, using public funds to increase private sector investment, setting guidelines for investments, establishing accessible and transparent advisory tools.
In the EU member states, for example, OSS are included in national strategies. In Germany, this is done e.g.. under point 4.9 of the long-term renovation strategy with the following explanation: “Potential funding recipients are often not sufficiently informed about existing funding offers for increasing energy efficiency and the use of renewable energies for heat in buildings, industrial processes and plants, and existing information as well as the application process are perceived as too complex from the customer’s point of view.”
The methods and tools of sdp can contribute to accelerating the introduction of OSS.
One-Stop-Shops: Expanding European experience
One-Stop-Shops are transparent and easily accessible intermediary tools from the customers’ point of view and innovative business models from the suppliers’ point of view. An OSS overcomes market fragmentation on both the demand and supply side by offering holistic renovation solutions for the entire value chain. The OSS stands in the middle of the energy renovation players and engages all other contractors, occasionally even the financial player. He represents and manages virtually the entire customer chain. The customer receives all the information, all the contracts and all the management from the OSS (source Boza-Kiss [1].
According to Boza-Kiss, “One-stop stores perform energy retrofits of buildings and help building owners, managers and tenants overcome organizational hurdles, management difficulties and financial challenges.
They assist those building owners and tenants who are already considering rehabilitation. They help motivated owners and tenants overcome difficulties that would otherwise prevent them from taking action, or that would make it slow or costly to implement the retrofit.
One-Stop-Shops offer holistic, integral solutions for the renovation of (typically) residential buildings, including towards nZEB, at reasonable cost and good quality.”
Examples of OSS are Reno Booster (A), Reimarkt (NL), HomeGrade (BE) or Bordeaux Métropole Energies (F). E.g. in the ProRetro project, structures are being established in Germany.
[1] Boza-Kiss, B., Bertoldi, P., Della Valle, N. and Economidou, M., One-stop shops for residential building energy renovation in the EU, EUR 30762 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2021, ISBN 978-92-76-40100-1, doi:10.2760/245015, JRC125380.