The European Commission launched two new calls for proposals under the LIFE programme. The Programme for the Environment and Climate Action (LIFE) was created in 1992, and it is the EU’s funding instrument for environment and climate action, which has co-financed more than 5,000 projects helping Europe to become greener. As of 2021, the LIFE programme includes the new Clean Energy Transition sub-programme.
First proposal
The call is titled: “Alleviating household energy poverty and vulnerability in Europe-LIFE Clean Energy Transition (LIFE-2023-CET)”. In recent years, European households have continued to spend an increasing share of income on energy, leading to higher rates of energy poverty and negatively affecting living conditions, well-being and health. Most recent estimates suggest that 6.9% of Europeans are unable to keep their homes adequately warm. Following the recent surges in energy prices, the number of vulnerable households overburdened by their energy costs is likely to be on the rise. These higher prices, combined with low incomes and poor energy efficiency of buildings and appliances, are the root causes of energy vulnerability. In addition to its causal multidimensionality, the phenomenon cuts across different policy sectors beyond energy, such as health, housing and social policy, requiring coordinated, holistic efforts at all governance levels, and involving different sectoral actors. While increasing the uptake of building renovation measures can bring significant long-term benefits to vulnerable households, more immediate energy efficiency measures at the household level and increased use of renewable energy are also key tools in addressing energy vulnerability and can lead to lower energy bills and improved living conditions.
Actions should contribute to actively alleviating energy poverty and energy vulnerability and build on the tools, indicators and resources of existing initiatives, such as the Energy Poverty Advisory Hub or the energy poverty pillar of Covenant of Mayors. The proposed action should cover one or more of the following aspects:
- Support the renovation of private multi-apartment buildings with vulnerable residents, with a special focus on reinforcing and adapting the governance and decision-making structures of building management and homeowners associations, tackling related regulatory framework barriers (e.g. property and/or rental laws), split incentives (where relevant), and setting up and coordinating relevant support services. The renovation actions supported should take into account the ability of residents to remain in their homes to avoid gentrification.
- Design and pilot sustainable, large-scale programmes to improve the skills and capacity of energy vulnerable households with a view to improving household energy efficiency and/or increasing the uptake of renewable energy solutions, thereby lowering household energy bills and improving comfort, and empowering vulnerable and energy poor consumers to take an active part in the energy market. These programmes should be tailored for vulnerable households and may include the provision of feedback, energy efficiency measures (e.g. draught proofing, simple insulation measures, or optimisation of existing building technology systems), financial support schemes, or collective solutions (e.g. group purchases, collective self-consumption/energy sharing schemes, peer to peer trading). These actions should be embedded in, and add value to, structural frameworks and activities involving public authorities, societal intermediaries or other relevant actors. A key element of the proposed activities should be the development of a strategy ensuring that the programmes will be sustained after the end of the project, linking to available sources of funding.
- Facilitate the delivery of capacity-building for regional and/or local authorities and societal intermediaries and support these actors in setting up cross-sectoral coordination structures to address energy poverty and vulnerability. This capacity-building should ultimately lead to the relevant actors co-designing and rolling out integrated interventions and support schemes for the benefit of vulnerable households. The actors involved are expected to represent all relevant sectors (e.g. energy, social, health, and housing) to ensure a holistic participatory approach to the alleviation of energy vulnerability in the long term and to improve social cohesion.
- Support obligated parties in setting up and testing schemes for energy efficiency improvement measures for the benefit of vulnerable households under the energy efficiency obligation schemes of the proposed EED (recast), including, where applicable, working together with local authorities or municipalities, and/or relevant networks such as the Covenant of Mayors. It is expected that obligated parties, in particular, are either directly involved or their support is clearly demonstrated in the proposal.
The deadline is the 16th of November 2023. For more information, please visit the Commission’s website.
Second proposal
The call is titled: “Towards an effective implementation of key legislation in the field of sustainable energy-LIFE Clean Energy Transition (LIFE-2023-CET)”. Under the Fit for 55 Package to implement the European Green Deal, the Commission proposed a whole set of new measures to revise the main pieces of climate and energy legislation, notably the Energy Efficiency Directive, the Renewable Energy Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. The revisions will make the policy framework for sustainable energy more stringent and ambitious. While the legislative framework offers a good amount of flexibility to the Member States to design the policy measures according to their needs and framework conditions, accurate monitoring, projecting and evaluation are essential elements of implementation. Importantly, the legislation is strongly interrelated and needs to be implemented and reported in an integrated, consistent way, including through the updates and implementation of the National Energy and Climate Plans, and their biannual integrated progress reports. With these challenges in mind, the topic aims to support the implementation of the main pieces of legislation in the field of sustainable energy, notably of the Energy Efficiency Directive (Scope A), the Renewable Energy Directive (Scope B) and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (Scope C).
Under the call 2023, proposals are invited for Scopes A, B and C, i.e. proposals for actions to support the implementation of:
- the Energy Efficiency Directive (Scope A).
- the Renewable Energy Directive (Scope B).
- the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (Scope C).
Proposals are expected to focus on one of the 3 scopes established below. The scope addressed should be specified in the proposal’s introduction. In case a proposal addresses elements of more than one scope, the added-value of a cross-cutting approach should be adequately explained. Actions under this topic are expected to:
- Promote and enable exchange of insights and sharing of best practices within and across Member States.
- Provide support, technical advice and tools for contextualisation and specification of requirements, in general, and according to the national and regional context.
- Scope, assess and model the impact of implementation options to comply with EU legislative requirements, thereby contributing to the design of more effective policies.
- Support the monitoring and evaluation of policy implementation.
- Develop and apply methodologies to more accurately measure, calculate and account for contributions made under the specific policy measures and programmes.
- Develop and support integrated methodologies for areas and sectors that are addressed by different policies and pieces of legislation, notably approaches for integrated collection of data, calculation/accounting, verification, monitoring, evaluation and reporting.
- Monitor and model energy and non-energy impacts of integrated solutions; gather data for the energy and buildings sector.
The deadline is the 16th of November 2023. For more information, please visit the Commission’s website.
To learn more about current calls for proposals or Eurodiaconia’s funding events, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our our Projects and EU Funding Officer Giorgia Signoretto at giorgia.signoretto@eurodiaconia.org.