Scaling Affordable, Energy-Efficient Housing in Europe

Last week at EU Sustainable Energy Week 2025, BwB Associate Tommaso Buso joined a panel on ‘Affordable Housing in a Green Transition: Financing Solutions for Inclusive and Sustainable Living’ to discuss innovative financing approaches that can scale to support the expansion of affordable, climate-resilient housing and sustainable living across Europe. Key insights from the session:

• Integrated ‘whole-building cells’ cut origination time When housing, procurement, legal, and finance experts are co-located in a single project cell, cities can transform retrofit preparation from months of siloed work into a streamlined, integrated process - accelerating the shift from pilot schemes to investable pipelines.

• Homogeneous portfolios depend on automated data Without a centralised, building-level database, teams can spend up to 70% of their time manually surveying properties. Automated aggregation of data on energy performance, usage, and building age is the linchpin for packaging dozens of buildings into a single, underwritable tranche.

• On-bill repayment and standardised MRV make savings bankable Embedding repayment into utility bills and adopting monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) that uses standardised protocols creates transparent and predictable cash flows. This enables municipalities to issue rated renovation notes that will attract institutional capital. From Vienna’s tenant-savings energy performance contracting model to Turin’s renovation securitisation, best practices show that technical readiness + financial innovation = bankable housing transitions. Tommaso called for greater standardisation of contracts, credit enhancement tools, and digital project dossiers to unlock the €100-plus billion needed for a net-zero building future in Europe.

  
  

  Huge thanks to the attendees, the moderators, and to Tommaso’s fellow panellists: Angeliki (Lina) Konstantinopoulou – SEFA | The Sustainable Energy Finance Association Valérie Séjourné – Solar Heat Europe Vlasta Krmelj – Mayor of Selnica ob Dravi; Director, Energy and Climate Agency of Podravje; Member, European Committee of the Regions

  Emmanuelle Causse – Secretary General, International Union of Property Owners (UIPI)

  Sharyn McAndrew – Sustainability Director, JLL

  Laetitia Brottier – Cofounder and Director of Innovation, DualSun Carlos Sanchez Rivero – Team Leader, Finance Team, Energy Efficiency Unit (DG ENER), European Commission Are you working on innovative retrofit finance or sustainable urban building solutions? Let’s connect and explore how we can drive inclusive, investable housing together contact@bwb.earth