FACILITA

Transforming Public Buildings Towards Energy Efficiency

The FACILITA project, funded by the LIFE Clean Energy Transition Program, promotes deep energy renovations in Spain’s public buildings. Through three regional One-Stop-Shops (OSS) in Extremadura, Madrid, and Valencia, FACILITA connects local governments with all-inclusive services —technical, financial, and regulatory—to facilitate streamlined energy efficiency upgrades in public buildings like schools, hospitals or administrative facilities, among others.

The Need for FACILITAting the Transition

Aligned with the EU’s energy and climate goals, FACILITA advances Spain’s National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan, which commits to substantial energy savings and emissions reductions in public buildings by 2030. Public facilities across Spain often rely on outdated, inefficient energy systems, resulting in high environmental and financial costs. FACILITA tackles these challenges by enabling accessible, affordable paths for local and regional authorities to implement deep energy renovations, responding to diverse climate and urban contexts.

The project aims to remove common administrative, legal, financial and technical barriers, equipping local and regional authorities an all-in-one service that supports efficient project planning, financial structuring, and high-quality implementation. Thus, FACILITA’s objectives are threefold: operating three sustainable OSSs for public buildings’ renovation, triggering investments for public facilities’ deep energy improvements contributing to clean energy transition, and facilitating the OSSs’ replication and upscaling across other European regions.

FACILITA's Approach

FACILITA plans to create and operate comprehensive renovation services -OSSs- in three Spanish regions, combining physical and virtual offices, with a mobile service. As integrated service centers, FACILITA OSSs will offer local and regional authorities a complete portfolio of services, including technical, financial, and legal advice, procurement management, and quality assurance. Thus, the whole Customer Journey will be covered: from the Onboarding phase to works’ monitoring, going through the project design, preparation and tendering and construction.

Following an exhaustive analysis of the legal, regulatory, and financial frameworks, as well as an assessment of existing models, FACILITA OSSs will be designed through a co-creative approach, taking into account the geographical, institutional, economic, and social specificities of each region. Accordingly, three distinct OSSs governance models will be tested, including public (Extremadura), private nonprofit (Valencia) and private (Madrid) management.

Subsequently, a testing and fine-tuning phase will be carried out, after which replicable tools -FACILITA Toolkit- will be developed. These tools, along with the project’s insights and outcomes, will be disseminated and replicated to other EU regions through the EU FACILITA Community of Practice.

Three OSS, Seven Partners

The FACILITA project brings together a robust network of partners, led by the Instituto Valenciano de la Edificación (IVE), each bringing key expertise in various areas of the energy transition, and key regional insights. IVE will be the OSS operator in Valencia, while the Extremadura Energy Agency (AGENEX) and ESCAN will design and run the Extremadura and Madrid OSSs, respectively. Ideas for Change, the European Federation of Agencies and Regions for Energy and the Environment (FEDARENE) and B.Link complement the consortium with a holistic approach to stakeholder engagement, replication and transference, and project management.

B.Link brings its expertise in strategic opportunity mapping and comprehensive management to FACILITA. B.Link supports IVE under Work Package 1, managing key administrative and logistical tasks. Besides, as the leader of Quality Assurance and Risk Management (WP1), B.Link is dedicated to maintaining high standards throughout the project’s lifecycle.

In the OSSs design phase (WP3), B.Link leads a participatory and co-creative process to develop three tailored FACILITA OSSs, responding to heterogeneous regional contexts. The OSSs’ evaluation (WP4) also falls under B.Link’s responsibility, ensuring proper implementation and gathering of the most relevant data to draw appropriate conclusions and fine-tune the pilot OSSs towards their sustainability and replicability.

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.