CAMS Platform

Towards harmonised climate and energy policies

The CAMS platform helped national ministries, regional and local public authorities plan and implement climate and energy policies in a more efficient way. It synthesised the findings of ten Interreg, Horizon2020 and EuropeAid projects.

Firstly, the platform provided municipalities, energy agencies and energy auditors with higher-quality, quicker, more holistic, and comprehensive energy auditing methodology that is harmonised across the Baltic Sea region. More than 400 energy professionals joined the national energy auditing days in Estonia, Latvia, Sweden, Poland and Russia to learn about energy efficiency, auditing and certification of the building energy performance. To test the auditing methodology, the partners elaborated 33 energy audits in five countries, 12 regions and 19 municipalities, distributed among four building types or NACE divisions (real estate, education, culture, social care). Out of these, 31 objects consumed 9 GWh/year, and their energy saving potential with chosen measures was 2,8 GWh, which corresponded to 30% of the total energy end-use for those audits. The greatest contributor to energy saving was the space heating measure and ventilation. The platform made these energy audits available to energy auditors around the Baltic Sea region. For example, the measures section provided the cross-region and cross-sectoral comparison and the range of cost efficiency.

New tools for energy efficient refurbishment

Secondly, the partners worked on strengthening the qualification programme for energy efficient refurbishment of multi-apartment buildings and integrating energy efficiency and climate change adaptation. The programme was introduced to higher education institutions in Estonia, Latvia, Sweden, Poland, Germany and Finland. The partners also used it for training local authorities on housing and urban regeneration.

Setting grounds for policies on energy efficiency and climate neutrality

Finally, the platform helped advance policy processes related to energy efficiency and climate neutrality. The partners developed policy recommendations on how to mainstream climate into new European Structural and Investment Funds programmes 2021-2027. The national EU funding programmes became more focused on accelerating the transition towards climate neutrality, for example, by improving energy efficiency via the reconstruction of buildings and district heating systems. These policy recommendations also contributed to the revision of the EU Climate Adaptation Strategy, adopted in 2021. The platform has helped include more active mainstreaming of climate resilience considerations in all relevant policy fields applicable to both the public and the private sectors.

The EUSBSR policy area Energy was actively engaged in the platform work, foremost on advancing the policy towards the unified data handling of energy performance audits and merging climate adaptation into energy efficiency projects.