Building ENergy Efficiency ImprovemenT: Demonstration for public buildings
| Acronym | BENEFIT |
| Website | https://benefitproject.eu/ |
| Priority axis | Protection of Environment – Transportation |
| Specific Objective | Upgrade public infrastructure to improve road travel time, safe border crossing and promote energy efficiency towards green transport |
| Call | 1st Call for Project Proposals |
| Start date | October 20, 2018 |
| Lead Partner | Ministry of Interior (sector Macedonia and Thrace) |
| Partners |
Centre for Renewable Energy Sources and Saving (CRES) Cluster of Bioeconomy & Environment of Western Macedonia (CluBE) Municipality of Bitola Public enterprise for urban planning, architectural design and engineering Bitola |
| Budget | 1.170.475,00 € |
BENEFIT project aims to address the demanding requirement to increase the energy-efficiency of public buildings and stimulate their retrofit towards Nearly Zero Energy Buildings.
The main common cross-border challenge of BENEFIT is to tackle the insufficient capacities of public administrations in this area to develop reliable cost-effective energy efficiency action plans for their public buildings’ stock, the lack of expertise to apply advanced energy modelling methodologies, the difficulty in the collection of buildings’ energy data, the lack of specific methodology to categorize them in typologies and the lack of specific decision-support system for planning energy retrofits.
BENEFIT aims to address all these challenges by undertaking activities along three key axes:
(1) development and test of an integrated decision-support platform for public authorities to facilitate them in planning, financing, implementing and monitoring public Buildings’ Energy-Efficiency plans and projects; outputs will provide packaged retrofit solutions of cost-prioritized interventions per building typology, accompanied by energy and cost indicators and suitable financial mechanisms;
(2) pilot implementation of one demonstration public building energy retrofit project and study of four bankable projects per country cross-border area, providing a leading example for increasing energy-awareness of the wider society.
(3) policy uptake and community engagement, through the direct involvement of partners in the project who have a multiplier role, ensuring wide dissemination and awareness raising of the relevant target groups.
Such an approach goes far beyond current practice in public authorities in the cross-border area, it is therefore in the position of becoming a game - changer in the wider area of the intervention.