Outcomes

 The main outcome of the REFURB project is in:

• Defining compelling offers for integrated nZEB house renovation.
• Developed methodology, the toolbox and a template for creating compelling offers, and
• Database of 10 country specific and market/ownership segment related compelling offers for BE, DK, DE, NL, SI and EE.       

Within the REFURB project a tool ‘My Energy Compass’ was developed. REFURB developed an online tool and approach to ensure market uptake of renovation packages. The partner Leiedal created the tool ‘My Energy Compass’. The tool is tailor-made for Leiedal’s region, but the concept and design can inspire similar tools in other regions in Europe. The key concept behind the design of the tool is the model of the customer journey to renovation. ‘My Energy Compass’ is designed to convince homeowners to start with their customer journey to renovate their house and to nudge them to the other steps in the customer journey.

Moreover, it was found that performance guarantees are neither a trigger for homeowners to complete their nZEB renovation nor a major barrier in entering the customer journey. However, this does not mean that quality issues should be neglected or that actions should not be put in place in order to achieve the expected energy savings. It is rather an appeal for a holistic quality approach: the entire customer journey should have quality checks built in.

REFURB also found out that quality assurance can be embedded in different ways in the compelling offers for NZEB renovation services. This is done in a way to complement performance guarantees of energy savings (as the prerequisite for customer-confidence), to improve the customer relationship by providing guidance along the entire customer journey (CJ). In one-stop-shops, the Single Point of Contact builds a trust relationship with the customer during the complete customer journey. The main challenge is to create customer confidence to get homeowners on board throughout the entire (11 steps) of a customer journey towards nZEB home renovation.

In order to facilitate widespread application of the project’s solutions, it is important to first test the solution within the regions of the project partners. Therefore, each participating country carried out a pilot test in collaboration with regional partners to create, test and improve the compelling offers for deep energy renovation for their target segment(s). The regions selected focus groups of local stakeholders (including homeowners) to participate in the pilot. Insights and lessons learned gathered during the focus groups were used to optimize the compelling offers accordingly.

A roll-out plan was composed that describes how widespread uptake of the solution developed in REFURB can be implemented in other regions and cities. The plan focussed on private homeowners throughout Europe and describes concrete actions that have to be taken-up.