The overall objective of BENEFIT is to strengthen the capacities of public authorities in the cross-border area of Greece-North Macedonia towards energy-efficiency (EE) planning for upgrading public buildings’ energy performance, as well as to increase energy awareness of the wider society on benefits from EE. An integrated decision-support tool will be introduced to support public authorities in EE planning using a common framework. The foreseen demonstration energy retrofit projects will provide great dissemination-awareness raising opportunities on the benefits from EE (e.g. reducing environmental impact; improving living/working conditions; achieving cost savings). The energy upgrades will lead to growth, jobs creation and new innovative markets. Therefore, BENEFIT’s overall objective links to the Programme strategy statement “to enhance territorial cohesion by improving living standards and employment opportunities, respecting the environment and by using the natural resources for tourism”.
One BENEFIT main objective is to implement pilot demonstration energy retrofits for public buildings in the CB area: i) 1 actual energy retrofit per country ii) study of four further bankable EE projects per country. Through the pilot projects: public authorities’ skills on planning, implementing and monitoring public buildings’ EE projects will improve; energy awareness of the wider society will increase; the project’s outputs will be made more tangible and accessible to target groups. Therefore, the project contributes to the Programme thematic priority 2c, S.O. 2.1 “Upgrade public infrastructure to improve road travel time, safe border crossing and promote energy efficiency towards green transport” where indicative actions include: “Improving energy efficiency of public buildings and infrastructure” and “Small scale investments in energy efficiency, in check point facilities and public buildings of cross- border area, including joint awareness initiatives for energy efficiency”.
