How blended finance can catalyse building renovation

In this paper, members of the EIT Climate-KIC community propose undertaking a “deep community retrofit” that scales up renovation at the district level rather than implementing piecemeal energy efficiency measures at the household level. Increasing the scale will not only boost the rate of renovation, but also generate co benefits not possible on an “apartment by apartment” basis. They also propose engaging whole communities in the renovation of common areas to create the conditions for pooling investments and demand. This in turn will create the local construction jobs that are desperately needed to lift Europe out of the pandemic-induced recession.