Objective:
Under this topic, a ‘European City Facility’ shall be run under the LIFE CET programme, which builds on the experiences gained from the current Horizon 2020 European City Facility[1] (H2020 EUCF) and envisages an appropriate follow-up and upscale of its fundamental approach(es).
Significantly enhanced investments will be needed to attain the ambitious objectives of the EU climate and energy policy and, in particular, the dedicated targets set for the years 2030 and 2050. This is also emphasized in the European Green Deal Investment Plan[2], which aims at mobilising at least €1 trillion of sustainable investments over the course of 10 years for Europe to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.
In this context, the level of sustainable energy and, in particular, energy efficiency investments needs to be increased considerably by both public and private funding sources, with an overall emphasis on progressively maximising the leverage ratio of private to public finance. This is also embedded in the “Renovation Wave”, which, in line with the European Green Deal[3] and the Climate Target Plan, addresses the strategic priority to substantially enhance energy efficiency in buildings and related investments to ensure a larger contribution of this sector to the increased 2030 climate and energy targets. Along the priorities identified by the Smart Financing for Smart Buildings initiative[4] and in order to achieve the Renovation Wave objectives of doubling building renovation rates and fostering deep energy renovation, EU decarbonisation efforts call for a more effective use of public funds, boosting project aggregation and building a substantial pipeline of energy efficiency investment projects across Europe.
Cities and municipalities play a key role in aggregating smaller projects into sizable packages and in mobilising the significant amount of finance needed for the energy transition. However, the degree of European cities and municipalities succeeding in developing and scaling up investment packages is still too limited in light of their overall potential and the challenges ahead. A key gap is the lack of capacity and/or resources of public authorities, especially of small and medium-sized municipalities, to transform their long-term climate and energy strategies, for instance Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) or similar, into credible investment concepts enabling access to different finance sources. In particular, public authorities in many cases lack (access to) financial, technical and legal expertise needed to collect additional data, develop an investment programme of scale (for instance, pooling projects and/or bundling projects with neighbouring constituencies) or design finance strategies which demonstrate sufficient maturity.
Such investment concepts would allow a large number of European cities and municipalities to start or intensify the process of mobilising investments in sustainable energy in a clearly tailored and target-oriented way. Depending on the underlying investment portfolio and structure, such concepts could be used to directly approach investors and/or financiers for more in-depth investment discussions and negotiations, and/or, where relevant, envisage combination/blending with other EU financing streams and services to trigger the expected investment (e.g. Cohesion Policy Funds, InvestEU Fund[5], National Recovery and Resilience Plans, PDA[6], National Investment Platforms).
Scope:
Proposals should take into account experiences regarding the ongoing H2020 EUCF, which is addressing above issues, and envisage an appropriate follow-up and upscale of its fundamental approach(es). In this context, proposals are expected to run a 'European City Facility' under LIFE which offers financial support and services to cities and municipalities or their groupings:
Proposers should be deeply rooted in municipal sustainable energy/climate planning and financial engineering of sustainable energy and, in particular, energy efficiency investments.
Proposers should demonstrate a deep understanding of the strategic nature of this initiative, as regards, inter alia, the different challenges for upscaling finance for sustainable energy investments and, in particular, for mobilising private financing sources.
Proposers should also demonstrate that they are able to mobilise a critical mass of cities/municipalities or their groupings and have a sound and inclusive outreach strategy to cities and municipalities across Europe.
In order to qualify for support through the European City Facility, cities and municipalities or their groupings should, inter alia, provide proof of political commitment, clarify existing planning processes and resources, demonstrate an ambitious scale of potential investment and level of energy savings in the specific context targeted based on politically approved SECAPs or plans of similar ambition, describe the investment sectors targeted, the type of financial solutions envisaged and the governance to develop the investment concept, envisage a convincing plan on the engagement of key stakeholders in the relevant (technical and financial) segments, including citizens, as well as a plan for long-term capacity building within the public administration, and commit to a monitoring of investment implementation for 2 years.
The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 16 million would allow the specific objectives to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
Expected Impact:
Proposals are expected to demonstrate the impacts listed below, using quantified indicators and targets, wherever possible:
[1]https://www.eucityfacility.eu/home.html
[2]COM(2020) 21 final, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52020DC0021&from=EN
[3]COM(2019) 640 final, https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/european-green-deal-communication_en.pdf
[4]COM(2016) 860 final, ANNEX 1 (ANNEX - Accelerating clean energy in buildings), https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/1_en_annexe_autre_acte_part1_v9.pdf
[5]See https://europa.eu/investeu/investeu-fund/about-investeu-fund_en.
[6]Project Development Assistance, e.g. ELENA-EIB, H2020 PDA
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