Catching up with Ren-on-Bill: Promoting investments in deep energy renovations through knowledge sharing
The Ren-on-Bill project was launched in 2019 to scale up investments in deep energy renovations of residential buildings. During its 3-year mandate, it strove to achieve this goal by promoting on-bill financing schemes that allow energy utilities to incur the cost of the clean energy upgrade and then recoup through repayments on utility bills.
Ongoing impact
Ren-on-Bill’s findings were presented in a policy roadmap, policy briefing and national roadmaps published in the project’s final months in 2022. “From a knowledge sharing perspective, the Ren-on-Bill project is outstanding,” remarks David Pérez, partner at CREARA Energy Experts in Spain that coordinated the project. Pérez goes on to explain that, through the knowledge it has shared, Ren-on-Bill (Residential Building Energy Renovations with On-Bill Financing) is having an impact on policymakers in Europe. The project has also been cited in reports and papers published by organisations around the world, including the European Commission, Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the Bank of Italy and the Electric Power Research Institute in the United States. Bluenergy, one of the Italian project partners, has successfully implemented the on-bill financing programme and solutions developed during the project. The energy utility has developed around 100 projects involving the renovation of residential buildings in Italy. Renovation work includes retrofitting the building envelope and implementing a hybrid solution combining photovoltaic self-consumption with heat pumps. “The average investment per project is EUR 400,” states Pérez.
Keywords
Ren-on-Bill, energy, building, renovation, on-bill financing