Nordic Energy Efficiency Mortgages

The EU green deal and ambitious climate targets of the Nordic governments require massive private investments into energy efficiency of the Nordic building stock, electrification of heating and smart energy systems.Though a substantial part of the needed investments is profitable on paper, they are not actually carried out – an issue labelled the energy efficiency gap.

For example, high transaction costs as a result of many points of contacts and lack of intuitive information makes energy renovations complex and unattractive for households. Also, lack of data hampers identification of buildings, which are ripe for energy efficiency renovations.

A common denominator for the barriers is that financial institutions are in a perfect position to overcome them, through their touchpoint with end customers and ability to finance the investments.

In this project, we will develop and market test concrete solutions to support Nordic financial institutions in overcoming the barriers.In concrete, we will do this by setting up a Nordic hub for Energy Efficient Mortgages, allowing us to leverage the already developed solutions within the initiative and previous research to which many consortium partners have contributed.

The developed solutions will be demonstrated and tested in the market by Nordea, Swedbank and Hemma.The ultimate output of the project will be so-called blueprints for financial institutions on how to implement solutions to overcome the identified main barriers to energy renovations. This will be advanced throughout the Nordic banking sector through a comprehensive outreach campaign.

The blueprints will showcase the value of a full-scale implementation to financial institutions as they are based on empirical tests within internal systems and response by end-customers.

Thus, the blueprints will serve as a script to financial institutions to kick-start the much-needed renovation wave to be on track with the EU green deal as well as national climate targets.