Social Energy Renovations:
Maximising social impact and boosting clean energy investments in sustainable renovation
SER combines affordable financing & technical assistance, enabling sustainable building renovations for the third sector
Improving social equality, health, wellbeing, productivity as well as overall social cohesion through building renovation
The Main Challenge
Lack of affordable financing and technical support in building renovation
The third sector or non-profit sector includes a range of non-profit organisations, associations, foundations, cooperatives, mutual associations, and social enterprises providing a broad range of services responsible for driving the social economy. This sector is composed of 28.3 million workers, representing 13% of the European workforce, and generates significant social impact.
Yet, it remains underserved by the financial industry making it challenging for non-profits to obtain the financing necessary to sustainably renovate their buildings. The lack of financing has played a large part in the absence of third sector building renovations, as non-profit organisations typically do not have the means to fund renovations with their own resources or obtain cheap funding.
Our Integrated Solution
SER tackles current barriers to renovation for the third sector by offering an integrated renovation solution that combines affordable financing and technical assistance, thus enabling easy and accessible sustainable building renovations for non-profits.
This solution involves people-centric stakeholder engagement, standardised technical project design, impact monitoring, and up-front financing. The project aims to simplify renovation by digitising the renovation process and providing support through a streamlined ESCO service.
Finally, SER enables a flow of private capital into the non-profit sector, thus maximising social and environmental impacts.
A strong and well-developed non-profit sector is a key driver in achieving a fair clean energy transition for all Europeans
Project Pillars
Social enterprises gain access to affordable sustainable renovations, coupled with technical assistance, while investors gain access to secure high-impact investments aligned with ESG and impact investment criteria.Innovative Financing Mechanism
Design, set up, and implement an innovative de-risking financing mechanism in which energy service companies will be enabled to facilitate affordable sustainable building renovations in the third sector.
Technical Assistance
SER provides improved technical assistance services through demand stimulation, standardisation, and digitisation. This promotes community training and development, data centralization, and audit standardisation.
Social Assessment
Assess and capture the multiple benefits of energy efficiency and renewable energy renovations to ensure that investments have a strong social and environmental impact.
Scaling Across Europe
SER is focused on Italy, with further scaling foreseen in Bulgaria and France, and exploratory roundtables in Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland.
Project phases
SER is a 3-year project, funded by the European Commission
1Perform market research, profile third sector buildings and design the financing instrument
2Launch the financing platform and technical assistance service in Italy
3Gain traction in Italy and adapt and replicate in other European countries
SER is led by an experienced consortium with complementary competencies and all of the required expertise to meet the project ambitions
Project Impact
Generating social, environmental and economic impact at community, national and European Union levels
893 tons/year
of CO2 emissions saved within the project duration
1.7 GWh/year
of renewable energy generated within the project duration
3.7 GWh
reduction in energy consumption within the project duration
3,100
jobs will be created by 2029
€200M
generated in clean energy
investments by 2029
The project's impact goes well beyond energy savings. It creates social impact by mitigating energy poverty and improving social equality, health, wellbeing, productivity, financial literacy as well as overall social cohesion.
News & Events
Past and future SER-related news and events
EUSEW Sustainable Energy Days: Fostering Sustainable Renovations in the Third sector
October 28, 2021
In light of the ambitious target set by the European Commission to make the EU the first carbon neutral continent by 2050, this event served as a platform to exchange lessons learnt and best practices supporting the uptake of sustainable and energy efficient measures in Europe’s social and non-profit sectors. Read more here.
ENEA Official Press Release (Italian)
June 10, 2021
SER enables sustainable building renovations in Italy's non-profit sector, but its benefits go beyond energy savings. In the next 5 years €200M will be invested in clean energy, 3000 jobs will be made & 900 tons of carbon dioxide will be mitigated. Read ENEA's full press release here.
SER Kick-off Meeting
May 25 & 26, 2021
The SER Project offically kicked-off in a hybrid setting, with several partners having participated digitally in the project's first Consortium Meeting hosted in Milan, Italy. Partners engaged in productive discussions about how to foster sustainable renovations in Italy's non-profit sector via the removal of their financial and technical barriers, and explored SER's replication in other EU countries.
Learn more about SER
and how the project stimulates sustainable renovation in the third sector
Europeans tend to spend 90% of their time indoors, thus buildings have an enormous impact on people’s health, wellbeing and productivity. SER aims to improve these conditions within the third sector.
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SER brings together 7 organisations from 4 EU countries
FS is a consortium of non-profit organisations engaged in transferring sustainability to third sector organisations. It promotes resource efficiency and energy efficiency in order to cut costs and allow investments to flow into social and welfare activities, and also supports the third sector's green transition.Contact Us
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