Pre-commercial procurement of breakthrough solutions for climate proofing of public buildings

The successful proposal will contribute to the implementation of the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change, allowing local and regional authorities to address their climate risks and accelerate preparedness and resilience to the changing climate.

Proposals are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• Customisation/pre-operationalisation of customer-tailored solutions in the area of climate adaptation of public buildings, that respond to the common needs and beyond state-of-the-art performance targets of the buyers group.
• Reduction of fragmentation of demand for innovative solutions by enabling public procurers to collectively implement a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) in the area of climate proofing of buildings, aggregating demand in an area subject to legislation and procedures that, due to its nature, is better/more efficiently addressed jointly, or which they would not have been able to tackle independently.
• New opportunities for wide market uptake and economies of scale for the supply side through the use of joint specifications, wide publication of results and – where relevant – contribution to standardization, regulation or certification to remove barriers for introduction of innovations into the market and creation of new products, processes and/or services ready for market uptake, leading to viable new businesses, jobs and sustainable economic growth.

Rationale and background

Buildings are vulnerable to climate change in different ways. For example, climate change can increase their risk of collapse, damage their construction materials, and even threaten their structural integrity. It can also cause significant loss of value because of more storms, snow or subsidence damage, water encroachment, deteriorating indoor climate and reduced building lifetime.

Besides impacting the structural features of a building, climate change can influence the conditions under which people live, work and interact indoors. An inability to properly regulate indoor temperatures may lead to thermal discomfort for users, potentially negatively impacting health, well-being, and productivity. In most places, users need to use heating and cooling systems to cope with thermal discomfort brought about by temperature extremes.

The EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change includes several actions tackling the climate risk of the built environment, while being mindful of the cross-cutting relevance of buildings within the European climate policy. The Strategy flags the need to improve the preparedness of buildings to climate change. Furthermore, the Strategy is mindful of buildings’ role in large-scale adaptation, for instance in curbing the urban heat island effect by means of green roofs and walls, and of the need for more accurate predictions of climate change stresses on the built environment. At the building level, investment policy decisions need to be underpinned with solid climate data - including household-scale decisions on whether to renovate. In terms of buildings’ insurance, a key priority of the Strategy is to close the climate protection gap for infrastructure and for the built environment. The water-energy nexus is also crucial, and the building sector can help tackling the related vulnerabilities.

The Strategy, and the Adaptation Mission which is a key implementing vehicle of the Strategy at the local level, gives priority to nature-based solutions such as green roofs and walls. In buildings, for instance, nature-based solutions can be a sustainable alternative to the sole use of air conditioning for cooling. Green infrastructure measures (green corridors, green urban areas, trees in cities as well as green roofs and walls) can increase resilience of the built environment particularly when integrated in urban planning and coupled with nature-based solutions. The PCP should look at nature-based solutions as priority; other approaches or combination with those are not excluded, when duly justified.

The 2020 Renovation Wave Communication explicitly envisaged at doubling renovation rates in the European building stock, ensuring higher energy and resource efficiency. It also pointed to the importance of standards for heating and cooling in buildings, while considering vulnerable people and improving society’s readiness towards heatwaves. The revision of the Green Public Procurement criteria for office buildings has covered climate resilience criteria, based on indicators developed within the new European framework for sustainable buildings.

The Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings and the Energy Efficiency Directive provide guidance on how buildings should be taking into account climate related considerations. In addition, the European Commission has also produced EU-level guidance on the climate resilience of buildings in March 2023.

The EU has been supporting the advancement of knowledge on how to increase the resilience of the built environment regularly, supporting through various research programmes the development of innovative ideas. This is also an area of potential synergies with Mission Cities and the New European Bauhaus initiative.

Supported Activities:

This PCP – i.e. a joint procurement of research and development services - is launched to reinforce public demand-driven innovation in developing solutions to climate proof public buildings. PCP has the potential to be an effective demand side action and a useful tool to close the gap between supply and demand for innovative solutions.

The PCP should deliver successful innovative and fully tested product(s) and/or service(s) that meet the common needs of the buyers' group (consortium of procurers) to procure research, develop innovative marketable solutions, speed up the time-to-market and provide best value for money.

This action supports the follow up to the July 2023 Communication^[1] on EU Missions assessment.

Activities should include:

• Preparation of the relevant documentation needed to launch and implement the procurement procedure;
• Joint research activities relating to the customisation/pre-operationalisation of prototypes end-user services in the area of climate change adaptation and mitigation validating the PCP strategy;
• Activities for the follow-up of the joint procurement, such as activities for awareness raising, networking, training, evaluation, validation and dissemination of results.

The core of the consortium should be a qualified “buyers’ group” (public procurement consortium), able to implement the action. Additional partners such as business/SME support organisations, innovation agencies or sectoral organisations may be included to assist procurers in knowing what is available on the market through market consultations. The project is expected to have a maximum estimated duration of 3 years.

The proposal should describe the jointly identified challenge, indicating how it fits into the mid-to-long-term plans of the consortium partners to improve climate resilience in their territories, why solutions currently available on the market or under development are not meeting their needs, and put forward concrete targets for the desired functionality/performance improvement in the quality and efficiency of the required solutions.

The proposal should also explain clearly how the creation of jobs, sustainable economic growth and new businesses will be assessed as an integral part of the successful application.

Links to the Mission

Proposals should include a mechanism and the resources to establish operational links and collaboration with the Mission Implementation Platform^[2], the Mission’s Community of Practice, and other relevant knowledge platforms such as Climate-ADAPT or Copernicus.

Applicants should acknowledge these requests and already account for them in their proposal, making adequate provisions in terms of resources and budget to engage and collaborate with the Mission.

[1] Commission Communication: EU Missions two years on: assessment of progress and way forward COM(2023) 457 final and Commission Staff Working Document: COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT EU Missions two years on: An assessment of progress in shaping the future we want and reporting on the review of Mission Areas and areas for institutionalised partnerships based on Articles 185 and 187 TFEU SWD(2023) 260 final

[2] Currently managed by MIP4Adapt under the contract CINEA/2022/OP/0013/SI2.884597 funded by the European Union. About MIP4Adapt (europa.eu)