LIFE European City Facility
(LIFE) European City Facility (EUCF), financed under the LIFE Programme, is the new and enhanced chapter of the already successful European City Faciliy, financed under the H2020 programme. We will keep providing tailored technical and financial support to municipalities for their sustainable energy projects.
Illustration : LIFE EUCF Team
The European City Facility (EUCF) is set up under the LIFE Programme of the European Union: tailor-made, rapid and simplified financial support (in the form of max. EUR 60,000 lump sum) and related services will be provided to a large number of municipalities in the European Union, Iceland and Ukraine, to enable them to develop relevant investment concepts.
Municipalities play a key role in a sustainable European energy transition. They have a tremendous potential to build comprehensive sustainable energy investment programs (i.e. investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy). They also play a key role in pooling smaller projects into larger investment portfolios and in mobilizing the significant financial resources required for the energy transition.
Although the potential is immense, there are fundamental obstacles. In many cases, there is a lack of credible, robust and sufficiently mature investment concepts (including identification of the potential project pipeline, legal analysis, governance analysis, basic financing strategy, and roadmap for implementation). However, such investment concepts are an initial prerequisite for access to different sources of funding.
In this context, EUCF addresses two fundamental barriers for sustainable energy investments:
- Financial and legal capacity of local authorities to transform their long-term energy and climate strategies into appropriate investment concepts.
- Lack of aggregation of fragmented smaller projects and thus lack of attractiveness for the financial sector.
The resulting investment concepts will represent an initial step towards a fully-fledged business and financial plan and – in this way – facilitate the subsequent mobilization of (local) investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy. Sources of funding may come from the private sector, but also from other EU-funded instruments such as the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF), various Project Development Assistance (PDA) facilities, such as the ELENA facility of the European Investment Bank, or various national investment platforms.
Start of the project: December 2022
Duration of the project: 61 months.
The LIFE EUCF project is co-funded by the LIFE Programme of the European Union.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor CINEA can be held reponsible for them.