CROSS Project Final Report: Unlocking Public Building Renovation in North-West Croatia and Beyond

Across the European Union, the primary obstacle to accelerating the public building Renovation Wave is not a lack of capital, but an upstream bottleneck in project preparation, technical standardisation, and administrative capacity

The CROSS Final Publishable Report provides a comprehensive review of the 36-month LIFE-funded project (Establishment of CRoatian One-Stop-Shop facility in North-West Croatia, September 2023 – August 2026). Coordinated by REGEA, the CROSS project successfully established an operational, regional One-Stop-Shop (OSS) serving four regional and 88 local authorities.

This publication details how the CROSS OSS model tackled the structural “100-year problem” of public building renovation in Croatia. It outlines the technical methodologies, financial blending tools, legal barrier frameworks, and replication steps developed to move public authorities from initial ambition to investment-grade project delivery.

Executive Summary & Core Results

The report documents how centralising technical, financial, legal, and procurement expertise within a regional energy agency and OSSs can dramatically scale up local renovation pipelines:

• Systematic Asset Mapping: Development of standardised building registries covering over 1,800 public assets across the City of Zagreb and the Counties of Karlovac, Krapina-Zagorje, and Zagreb, establishing a data-driven basis for energy planning.
• Procurement-Ready Technical Criteria: Creation of the Guidelines for Cost-Effective Deep Renovation, aligned with the EU Taxonomy and the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and embedded directly into public tenders as binding technical annexes.
• Investment Preparation at Scale: Delivery of 100 investment-grade feasibility studies for educational, healthcare, and municipal facilities, unlocking an active project pipeline exceeding €70 million.
• Unlocking Major Financing: Demonstration of how regional project preparation facilities act as catalysts for institutional capital, directly enabling a €395 million European Investment Bank (EIB) framework loan for sustainable urban infrastructure in Zagreb.
• Legal Barrier Resolution: Drafting of transferable action plans to systematically resolve property rights, unpermitted historical construction, and title encumbrances that frequently stall municipal projects.

A Practical Handbook

This publication is a practical handbook for regional energy agencies, local authorities, and national policymakers working to implement the EPBD and establish public sector facilitation structures under the LIFE Clean Energy Transition framework.

Rather than focusing solely on project outcomes, the report examines the policy, procurement, and macroeconomic obstacles encountered during implementation, such as strict national procurement constraints and regulated energy prices, and presents the concrete workarounds developed by the consortium.

The CROSS Model Replication

The CROSS project developed a comprehensive suite of tools, technical guidelines, and legal frameworks to help regional energy agencies and municipalities replicate the One-Stop-Shop model across Europe. Detailed frameworks and methodologies for each core output are documented within the project’s official report:

1. D2.4 Public Building Registry Structure: Customisable database template for asset management.
2. D3.1 Guidelines for Cost-Effective Deep Renovation: Technical specification matrix for EPBD and Taxonomy alignment.
3. D3.2 Feasibility Study Template & Methodology: Standardised technical-financial analysis framework.
4. D3.3 Legal Barrier Action Plan Template: Diagnostic protocol for municipal property resolution.
5. D2.1 OSS Governance and Sustainability Model: Operational playbook for long-term regional OSS facilities.