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European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency
Project

Bundling up sustainable energy investments through Energy Performance Contracting and crowdlending

The BUNDLE UP project launched over 60 sustainable energy projects in the public and private sector triggering more than EUR 44 million of investments in Portugal thanks to H2020 Project Development Assistance. 

BUNDLE UP project
Sustainable energy investments through Energy Performance Contracting and crowdlending

The BUNDLE UP project launched over 60 sustainable energy projects in the public and private sector triggering more than EUR 44 million of investments in Portugal thanks to H2020 Project Development Assistance. 

There are many profitable energy efficiency projects, representing millions of investment opportunities and short payback times that do not reach implementation because they fail to attract investment due to their lack of scale.

The EU financed BUNDLE UP consortium simply seized the opportunity and successfully addressed this particular challenge by setting up the Ponto Energia platform, a one-stop shop for the development and implementation of sustainable energy projects in the public and private sector, bringing together project promoters, installers and investors.   

Led by the impact crowdlending platform GoParity and involving energy agencies in Porto, Gaia, Cascais, Almada and Arrábida, the project managed to tender Energy Performance Contracts (EPCs) for aggregating public lighting projects. For example, the project procured Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) to refurbish over 28,000 public lighting points for the municipality of Almada (with investments of nearly EUR 9 million), 19,000 lighting points for the municipality of Vila do Condo (with over EUR 10 million) and 10,000 lighting points for the municipality of Setúbal (with more than EUR 3.5 million).      

Many additional public lighting projects were launched using blended financing and ensuring the uptake of available European Regional Development Funds (ERDF). Other projects implemented by BUNDLE UP included the aggregation of energy renovation projects in social housing and crowdlending for photovoltaic (PV) installations for self-consumption on public and private buildings. 

Overall, the BUNLDE UP project succeeded in launching 64 sustainable energy projects with an investment of more than EUR 44 million, leading to 44 GWh of energy savings per year and the installation of 3.6MW of PV.

The lesson learnt from BUNDLE UP is that there is possible funding for every financially sound sustainable energy project, regardless of its size. All project results are available on the CORDIS platform.

Future steps

The Ponto Energia platform will continue to operate through the new BundleUp NEXT project, funded by Horizon 2020, which is rolling out its successful services to the central public administrations and municipalities across Portugal.

H2020 Project Development assistance is available to public and private project promoters under the new LIFE Clean Energy Transition sub-programme, supported with a 95% funding rate. The 2021 Call is currently open until 12 January 2022.

Stakeholders

Coordinators

POWER PARITY S.A.

Address
Rua Paulo Da Gama, 629, Porto, Portugal