A toolbox to support local action plans to improve energy efficiency and renewable energy use in municipal public buildings.

Renovation of public buildings is a strategic goal for both the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) included in The Clean Energy for all Europeans policy package and has been included in several National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) drafts. Pursuing the policies outlined by these national long-term roadmaps will require coordinated actions at local level in order to overcome existing barriers (e.g., lack of financial resources and technical expertise, low energy awareness), and take advantage of current opportunities (technological innovation, smart energy management, EU/national/regional funding, etc.). The Interreg MED project "Prioritize energy efficiency measures in public buildings: a decision support tool for regional and local public authorities - PrioritEE" (2016-2019) aimed at strengthening the policy-making and strategic planning competences of local and regional public authorities in the energy management of municipal public buildings (MPBs). To this end, a comprehensive methodological approach, the socalled PrioritEE toolbox, was developed, tested, refined and transferred in five Mediterranean pilot cases, targeting more than two hundred MPBs (among offices, schools, cultural and social centres, sports facilities and swimming pools) characterized by different built areas and construction dates. The toolbox includes a Technology Analytical Database and a Decision Support Tool (DST) developed ad-hoc to prioritize Energy Efficiency (EE) and Renewable Energy Source (RES) investments in MPBs, selecting the best suited measures in terms of energy savings, return of investment, etc. The DST also serves as an online repository of public buildings which gathers and makes available on a common platform all information about buildings commonly split among several documents. A comprehensive set of key indicators is an integral part of the DST and allows to compare different scenarios of interventions and to monitor energy consumption, assessing the effects of the proposed strategies. Moreover, the toolbox includes also How-to Briefs, easy-to-use brief guidebooks on a wide range of topics related to the energy-efficient renovation of MPBs, and a Repository of Good Practices to enhance sustainable energy awareness and foster behavioural changes in MPBs. All these components are available through the project website which constitutes an easy-toaccess Open data & knowledge access infrastructure. The final output of this experience, the so-called PrioritEE toolbox, allowed to define five Local Action Plans to improve EE and RES use in municipal public buildings in line with the Covenant of Mayors format of the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP) for this specific sector. Stakeholders involvement in capacity buildings activities (local workshops, training activities, case study exchange visits) was assured throughout the project activities, and also communication and changing behaviour initiatives (mainly through living labs) specifically focusing users of public buildings (in particular, schools and municipal offices). The presentation will provide a critical evaluation of the main outcomes of this collaborative effort, describing the main results achieved, the lessons learnt, and the main common strategies and policy recommendations deriving from this experience which focused on the Mediterranean area but can be replicated across all Europe.