Building renovation in practice: Challenges, solutions, and collaboration
On October 10, UIPI moderated the workshop Building renovation in practice: Challenges, solutions, and collaboration at the Sustainable Places 2025 conference in Milan. The workshop focused on the implementation of the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), and brought together five innovative initiatives, OneClickRENO, iEPB, FACILITA, BUILDUPspeed and BARRIO. Each initiative tackles key barriers such as cost, complexity and fragmented guidance, offering practical and scalable tools to help property owners, local authorities and professionals implement the objectives set out in the EPBD.
The session sparked an open discussion to explore synergies, shared challenges, and policy recommendations, bringing together a diverse audience including representatives from CINEA, industry, and other European projects. Participants examined the feasibility of the tools in renovation scenarios, with policy and regulatory barriers emerging as key concerns. Harmonisation of standards across Member States was identified as a major obstacle, alongside limited awareness of the tools among end users and perceptions that policymakers remain disconnected from the real renovation needs.
Despite these challenges, the workshop highlighted the strong technical quality of the outputs and created the space for meaningful exchange among participants.
