ManagEnergy Expert Mission to Lyon, France

The ManageEnergy Expert Mission To ALEC Lyon – the local energy agency of the Lyon Municipality – was completed on the first week in January. The goal of the expert mission was to understand how the agency could best scale-up Global energy renovation of family houses to Bâtiment Basse Consommation (BBC) ~ Near-Zero Energy Building (NZEB) level in addition to developing its service in the B2B area, particularly in renewable heat. The Agency has significant experience providing information to householders and supporting the BBC level renovation of condominiums. The Expert for the mission was Paul Kenny, from the Tipperary Energy Agency in Ireland. The Irish Energy Agency has scaled their deep renovation to 100 Superhomes and 25 tertiary buildings in 2019 and his experience was thus perfectly suited to support the ALEC Lyon in their ambitions.

The three days started with the introductions to ManagEnergy, establishing goals and objectives and the introduction of both agencies. The focus quickly went to the “customer journey” for the homeowners who wished to use the Ecoréno’v platform. Ecoréno’v is a service developed by the Lyon Metropolis to support and guide the eco-renovation of private buildings (global renovation/deep retrofit). It was compared to the Superhomes – a similar service developed by the Tipperary Energy Agency – customer journey and the opportunities for improvement were discussed.

The second day focused on a wide stakeholder workshop for many of the stakeholders on the customer journey including construction companies, engineers, architects, low-income service providers, integrated retrofit service providers, etc. They also examined the customer needs, their services and how they could be streamlined to make the Ecoreno’v service more accessible and user-friendly.

The third day examined ALEC’s B2B service for renovation and renewable thermal heat, which is a new service. It looked at the different steps needed and how the ALEC could integrate better with service providers to ensure a customer focussed, streamlined service. The final stage was a workshop with the author and leader for the Sustainable energy action plan for Greater Lyon, where the key opportunities for the scaling up of renovation were discussed and examined.

Throughout the three days, ManageEnergy expert Paul Kenny provided insights, aided the mapping and improving the service, ensuring that the roadmap ahead for scaling renovation to NZEB was clear and that the ALEC was equipped and empowered to identify the areas where they will change, where they will adapt their existing services and the new skills they will need for selling the energy transition to the citizens of the Greater Lyon Area.