DISTENDER will provide integrated strategies by building a methodological framework that guide the integration of climate change (CC) adaptation and mitigation strategies through participatory approaches in ways that respond to the impacts and risks of climate change (CC), supported by quantitative and qualitative analysis that facilitates the understanding of interactions, synergies and trade-offs. Holistic approaches to mitigation and adaptation must be tailored to the context-specific situation and this requires a flexible and participatory planning process to ensure legitimate and salient action, carried out by all important stakeholders. DISTENDER will develop a set of multi-driver qualitative and quantitative socio-economic-climate scenarios through a facilitated participatory process that integrates bottom-up knowledge and locally-relevant drivers with top-down information from the global European Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and downscaled Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) from IPCC. A cross-sectorial and multi-scale impact assessment modelling toolkit will be developed to analyse the complex interactions over multiple sectors, including an economic evaluation framework. The economic impact of the different efforts will be analyse, including damage claim settlement and how do sectoral activity patterns change under various scenarios considering indirect and cascading effects. It is an innovative project combining three key concepts: cross-scale, integration/harmonization and robustness checking. DISTENDER will follow a pragmatic approach applying methodologies and toolkits across a range of European case studies (six core case studies and five followers) that reflect a cross-section of the challenges posed by CC adaptation and mitigation. The knowledge generated by DISTENDER will be offered by a Decision Support System (DSS) which will include guidelines, manuals, easy-to-use tools and experiences from the application of the cases studies.

By 2050, European cities should be decarbonised, sustainable and provide for a high quality of life. In order to achieve this goal, society as a whole has to become more accountable and mutual responsibility needs to be distributed amongst all actors. Therefore, urban governance schemes need to become more transparent and inclusive so that all can benefit. This is why public administrations need to be equipped with skills and support schemes. Local transition roadmaps draw on the required skills and capacities of local authorities and allow them to become leaders of the energy transition. Such roadmaps provide explicit strategies and operational tools for local governments to address the multiple challenges of the energy transition and their ecological, economic, and social aspects. Thereby, their development provides both, space for innovations to develop, and participatory approaches to flourish. TOMORROW aims at empowering local authorities to lead the transition towards low-carbon, resilient and more liveable cities by engaging citizens and stakeholders in the development of 2050 transition roadmaps. The development process of local transition roadmaps lies at the core of TOMORROW, which recognizes that the achievability of the formulated energy transition targets relies upon effective engagement of civil society, local key actors and their collaboration with local governments. For implementing deliberative governance schemes, the project´s pilot cities will be involved in city trainings and benefit from peer-to-peer activities with lighthouse cities. Best practices and innovative sustainable energy solutions, as well as innovative engagement mechanisms will be shared. Tailored support material, such as a toolbox containing methodological guidelines and factsheets on best practices will be developed for replication. Learning relays and masterclasses will improve participants´ capacities. Policy recommendations aim at an enabling framework for cities´ transition.

The overall aim of Sav€ the Homes is to contribute to an increase of an annual renovation rate of > 5% by offering attractive OSS services to homeowners, managed and implemented by municipalities as being trustworthy entities for citizens. This is achieved by the implementation of OSS Citizen Hub concept, offering renovation offices, both as physical hubs and web-based virtual hubs at local level based on the concept of medium-sized cities and to maximize replicability, at national and EU level. Sav€ the Homes will: 1. Offer a full customers journey in 5 stops: - Stop 0 Onboarding - Stop 1 Design: Social design by co-creation with the homeowners - Stop 2 Elaboration: Organizing the financing, purchasing of renovation kits and the preparations for the construction of the renovation works - Stop 3 Construction: Realization of proven quality in interaction with homeowners and a peer-to-peer Renovation Community, as part of the Citizen Hub - Stop 4 In-use: Monitoring of total performances in practice for ensuring sustainable quality of building and user experience 2. Create strong networks and trustworthy partnerships with local actors in the whole chain 3. Create locally developed and organized financing and investment pipelines The integrated home renovation services will be established within already established OSS networks at the city (City of Rotterdam) and regional (Comunitat Valenciana) level in two EU countries, building upon existing energy targets and networks so far well established at the city levels where it brings a new method and mechanism on how to improve the existing interactions between the relevant organizations and stakeholders. It holistically connects renovation advisory, products and services, finance opportunities and legal advice with a building owner at a single point. By involving relevant EU umbrella organizations, the concept will be further promoted in other member states to come to a harmonized method applicable at EU level.

EBENTO is aiming to develop an integrated platform for all actors involved in building and renovation sector to provide one-stop-shop to better coordinate and manage Energy Performance Contracting, bringing together the needs from all actors involved in enhancing the building stock. Through EBENTO, citizens will increase their implication in building energy efficiency enhancement, and both public institutions and energy communities will be able to identify potential energy efficiency improvements in residential housing stock, with SMEs and ESCOs support. Furthermore, with EBENTO platform, new business models for optimizing the financial (and, indirectly, other) resources available will be validated: • EBENTO will explore the best financing and collaboration schemes to set up energy services. • EBENTO will study how to enhance current Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) for Demand Side Mechanism (DSM) services and what kind of investment options (grants, loans…) can be implemented to increase the number and impact of energy efficiency projects in the city/region • By using digital tools, EBENTO will gather data from EPCs, financial schemes and energy savings to give to the citizens the required trust for investing in new solutions, and to companies the relevant information to reduce costs and easily replicate the work developed. EBENTO will ensure the exchange of relevant information between the different actors, making the renovation process cost-efficient and easy to operate and replicate. The platform will collect data related to performance contracts and guarantees, devices monitoring, energy savings, building information modelling, users’ opinions and comfort levels, among others.

Energy poverty is becoming a main challenge of the European welfare systems and beyond, abounding on the inequalities derived from living conditions and social determinants, with a direct and negative impact on health and wellbeing, mainly in urban contexts. Health problems attributable to energy poverty include respiratory diseases, heart attacks, stroke and mental disorders (stress, anxiety, depression), but also acute health issues, such as hypothermia, injuries or influenza. The complex nature of this recently identified phenomenon requires a comprehensive analysis of the problem and its solution from a multidimensional approach, which should involve environmental, political, social, regulatory and psychological issues, thus involving other Social Determinants of Health and health inequalities. Urban policies and initiatives might respond very efficiently to energy poverty and their effects on the citizens wellbeing and health, by providing evidence-based interventions covering different angles of the challenges, including complementary actions covering individual (behavioural) but also social-political actions (regulations, urban planning) that include health in all policies. Based on the socio ecological model and on the realist evaluation approach, WELLBASED will design, implement and evaluate a comprehensive urban programme to reduce energy poverty and their effects on the citizens health and wellbeing, built on evidence-based approaches in 6 different pilot cities, representing different urban realities but also a diverse range of welfare and healthcare models. The project’s multidisciplinary consortium, made up of 19 partners from 10 countries, has been built to guarantee the full coverage of the scientific, clinical, social, and environmental competencies, and to gather the viewpoint of different communities and actors necessary to develop, test and evaluate the interventions related to WELLBASED in order to maximize its chances of success. WELLBASED is a part of the European cluster on urban health.