Homeowners are often paralysed by the technical maze of deep renovation. The partners of the RenoCOOP consortium are all devoted to lowering this barrier by offering reliable and impartial advice to homeowners. These five not-for-profit cooperatives provide independent guidance to help homeowners and communities plan and deliver successful retrofit projects in their respective regions from Blegium, France, Ireland, Spain and Portugal.
At a consortium meeting held in Lisbon at the end of June, members of Goiener--a partner in both projects--presented the RenoVisor Single-Family House (SFH) tool mock-up to the rest of the RenoCOOP consortium. It was demonstrated how this tool could facilitate the work of these cooperatives already leading the energy transition. They are the ideal "prescribers" for such a tool. It effectively de-risks the sales process by providing data-backed technical advice. It gives homeowner-facing staff instant reliable information during those long after-hours meetings where community leaders are engaged and skeptical neighbours must be won over.
What is RenoCOOP?
RenoCOOP unites five citizen cooperatives to move beyond a laborious, house-by-house process and scale-up the One-Stop-Shop approach. They are tackling three main issues:
- Standardising neighbourhood-scale technical designs.
- Creating framework agreements for seamless builder coordination and quality control.
- Integrating the Building Renovation Passport (BRP) to facilitate staged deep renovation, helping families manage complexity and budgets over time.
RenoVisor: bringing Cclarity to the human element
RenoVisor bridges research and reality with user-centric tools like the SFH tool. It offers multi-stage planning, "user inconvenience ratings," and vital climate-resilience insights, such as indoor comfort during heat waves. Its backend uses bottom-up simulations and AI metamodels that generate results within milliseconds—building trust through instant technical clarity.
Both projects can reinforce each other
This is where the tactical meets the technical: RenoCOOP cooperatives provide real-world insights and can help RenoVisor to go beyond the 10,000-household testing ground required for scientific validation. In return, RenoVisor delivers the participatory advisory and consensus-building tools necessary to secure buy-in from homeowners, condominiums (in the case of the MFH tool) and communities (ENC tool).
The Renovation Wave is Participatory
Shifting to neighbourhood-scale efficiency provides a tactical path towards 2050 climate targets. Collaboration transforms individual silos into a shared renovation plan. Reliable, science-backed tools can help to overcome the technical hurdles and support community-driven decisions and actions.