Metropolitan Research Institute
Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest
In September 2020, our new H2020 project called ComAct – Communities’ Taylored Actions for Energy Poverty Mitigation took off. In the next three years, we will be working together with our partners from Bulgaria, North-Macedonia, Lithuania, and Ukraine on a new financial and technological renovation scheme for multi-apartment buildings focusing specifically on energy poverty in Central-Eastern Europe (CEE). Due to the very high homeownership rates in the region, the traditional schemes shaped by Western-European experiences, where energy poor people typically rent their homes, are hardly applicable here. Thus a new approach is needed, as there are a lot of people in CEE who live in their own apartments but still need assistance to renovate their homes. A comprehensive and effective program needs to cover the financial, technical, and communal aspects of renovation of multi-apartment buildings, therefore, ComAct combines all the three factors.
While the financial and technical factors are frequently discussed and studied, less work analyzed the communal aspects of the renovation of multi-apartment buildings. Thus we aim to unfold the obstacles of renovation stemming from the dynamics of the community, and we try to find ways to overcome these obstacles. These can include the mixed social composition of condominiums, differences in financial situation and interests, but also previous conflicts within the community. ComAct builds upon the idea, that with community building and good management of the community it is possible to include many of those condominiums in mainstream renovation programs that have been left out from these previously.
Within the framework of the pilot programs of ComAct, multi-apartment buildings will be renovated in all of the five partner countries. MRI works on the deep renovation of buildings in the third district of Budapest in cooperation with the municipality of Óbuda and local NGOs. We aim to find the complex technical-financial-communal solution, which makes deep renovation available for low-income households too. We want to change the widespread approach, according to which deep renovation is a luxury and can be available only for high-income groups. We believe that these overarching interventions have to be and can be made accessible also for communities affected or threatened by energy poverty.
The website of ComAct will be out soon, till then, check REELIH, our previous project related to energy poverty in the region at https://www.habitat.org/emea/stories/rely-reelih.
Source of photos: Municipality of Óbuda
Hanna Szemző, managing director of Metropolitan Research Institute gave a presentation at the launch event for a new report by the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group (CLG) titled ‘The energy transition in Central and Eastern Europe: The business case for higher ambition’ in Bucharest on the 21 of March 2019.
Client: University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership
Duration: October 2018-March 2019
The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group (convened by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership) contracted MRI as the leading party of a consortium to produce a conversation paper on the energy transition in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This relatively short, business oriented document sought to highlight the main aspects of energy transition and called attention to the business opportunities it offers. The paper covered three interrelated topics: the transition in energy generation, the energy efficient interventions in the building stock and finally the transition trends in urban mobility. MRI cooperated with Energiaklub, Mobilissimus ltd as companies, and Ada Ámon from E3G as a private consultant to cover all aspects.
The paper emphasized both the similarities among the Central and Eastern European countries (11 new member states of the EU according to the interpretation of the study except for Malta and Cyprus) rooted in the socialist past, the relatively lower level of economic productivity and such factors as high homeownership rates, lower level of energy awareness, and high price sensitivity. It also showcased the growing differences, with a few front runner countries in building renovations and mobility solutions (e.g. Czech Republic), some with well advanced digital solutions (e.g. Estonia), and others suffering from particular difficulties, such as high level of pollution and the related coal mining problems (e.g. Poland).
The study demonstrated that the existing high potential of the region regarding renewables is far more than the currently exploited capacities. This gap is the result of political considerations (being reluctant to upset the status quo) and the high public investment needs. Furthermore, there is great potential in the energy efficiency renovation of the building stock, especially that the mass construction of industrialised buildings allows the development of standardised renovation solutions. Finally, while CEE countries are more used to environmental friendly mobility modes (public transport accounts for a considerable share of all journeys even today), the lower purchasing power can be a barrier to effective energy transition in the mobility sector, as it slows down the uptake rate of electric vehicles.
In spite of these difficulties, the CEE region has a high growth potential regarding the energy efficient investments. However the spread of a reliable and stable regulatory environment will be crucial in all CEE countries in order to allow businesses to operate and make use of the high market potential.
The full report is available at the The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group website.
Metropolitan Research Institute’s colleague, Anna Bajomi, advisory board member of European Energy Poverty Observatory, presented about private tenants’ energy costs at the event of “Advances in fuel poverty research and practice: a pan-European early career researcher symposium” as a bursary of EEGA Charitable Trust.
Client: Directorate General for Research and Innovation (European Commission)
Project duration: September 2012 – August 2016
This Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) funded research project had a very broad focus: on the one hand it concentrated on identifying the possibilities of establishing new collective-self organized residential complexes all over Europe, on the other hand it intended to define the circumstances under which residents of owner-occupied multi-unit buildings can implement the energy efficient renovation of their estates. The project has developed a website that assists the communities to go through either the construction or the renovation process. MRI was responsible for developing business models that would enable SMEs to be drivers of the construction or renovation process. The therefore project aimed at developing business models that focus on a special segment of the market, producing business and service products (e.g. e-market place) providing new business opportunities for SMEs in this segment, comprising
During the research process MRI was able to get acquainted with the establishment and operation of collective-self organized housing forms that are practically unknown in Hungary if we speak about new construction (part of this segment is co-housing that is quite common in some European countries, like Denmark), while it is the dominant form of housing if we speak about renovation as most of the multi-unit buildings are owner occupied in Hungary (while this is not the case in Western-Europe).
All the deliverables of the project can be found at: http://proficient-project.eu
