NERO

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The LIFE NERO project aims to establish the first national, state-coordinated One-Stop Shop (OSS) for residential energy renovation in Hungary. The OSS will provide homeowners with integrated technical, financial and administrative support throughout the renovation process. The service follows a hybrid approach. A central digital platform is combined with in-person guidance from a network of certified Renovation Mentors, who will accompany households from the initial assessment to the completion of the works. 

To facilitate decision-making and ensure consistent quality, the project will develop Standardised Renovation Packages, enabling homeowners to receive transparent and comparable offers from vetted contractors. In parallel, NERO will co-design accessible green financing products together with financial institutions and integrate them into the OSS service. A dedicated support pathway will address the needs of vulnerable and energy-poor households. The project will also introduce a national training and certification programme for contractors joining the NERO network, complemented by specialised training for the Renovation Mentors.

Bringing together public authorities, the financial sector, technical experts and civil society organisations, the NERO consortium will validate the proposed model through pilot activities in two Hungarian regions, South Transdanubia and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg, aiming to trigger more than 100 renovations. 

Upon completion, NERO will deliver a self-sustaining business model, a replication toolkit and a national rollout roadmap. Together these will form a lasting instrument for the decarbonisation of the Hungarian building stock and a reference framework for other European regions. 

Contributing to the EU Renovation Wave, the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and the recast Energy Efficiency Directive, NERO promotes energy efficiency, consumer protection and access to finance, supporting a just transition for Hungarian households and the country’s path towards climate neutrality. 

METHODOLOGY  

• Market analysis and OSS service design. 

• Digital platform development. 

• Green financing products and integration. 

• Pilot implementation (two Hungarian regions). 

• Business model, replication and national rollout. 

• Impact monitoring and policy feedback. 

• Dissemination and capacity building.

EPU-NTUA ROLE

In the NERO project, EPU-NTUA will design and develop the digital platform that will support the operation of the One-Stop Shop network, building on the know-how and proven services of previous platforms for energy efficiency financing. The platform will follow a Mentor-centric workflow covering the entire renovation journey. It will rely on a role-based architecture, with dedicated portals for homeowners, Renovation Mentors, certified contractors and financial partners. Through AI-assisted tools for preliminary energy audits and the comparison of standardised contractor offers, the platform will simplify the preparation of renovation projects. An automated pre-qualification pipeline will allow financial institutions to evaluate “bank-ready” dossiers and make offers to aggregated project bundles. In addition, a data analytics backend will monitor key performance indicators in near real time and support the project’s monitoring dashboards. 

EPU-NTUA will ensure a secure and accountable flow of information between all actors, through GDPR-compliant data management, role-based access control, immutable audit logs and regular backups. The platform’s architecture will be based on technical specifications and user requirements defined together with the project partners. The platform will then be refined continuously through user acceptance testing with each user group, in-platform feedback and regular meetings with stakeholders, in order to improve its usability, robustness and performance.

PARTNERS