Full project name: Innovative Financing for Local Sustainable Energy Solutions

Funding programme: Intelligent Energy Europe

REA North project budget: 89.861,00 EUR

Project duration: March 2014 – February 2017

Project partners:

• Energy Cities
• IBGE-Brisel
• Agueda
• Aveiro
• Udine
• Parma
• Frederikshavn
• CU Bordeaux,
• Stuttgart
• Riga
• Regional Energy Agency North

Overview

Local authorities (LAs) involved in the INFINITE Solutions project (called INFINITE LAs) are located in the countries which will benefit from the EU Cohesion Policy 2014-2020 (BE, DE, DK, FR, HR, IT, LV, NL, PT and which will need to implement the new Energy Efficiency Directive. These policies will support energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RES) projects and in particular energy-efficiency upgrades in public and private buildings via innovative financing instruments rather than grants. This will require strong technical, financial, legal and coordination skills and expertise which are currently missing, thus hindering policy implementation.

INFINITE LAs – all Covenant of Mayors (CoM) signatories – will carry out peer coaching activities aiming at developing the expertise of local staff and at replicating two proved financing schemes tested by the cities of Stuttgart (DE) and Delft (NL) in learning LAs:

• Four LAs, committed to implement their Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs)’ measures in the public sector, will create a revolving fund linked to internal contracting (intracting) financing scheme.
• Five LAs committed to implement actions in the private building sector will create a revolving fund linked to soft loans financing scheme.