W4RES is a 3-year-project starting the 1st of November 2020. This project is looking at scaling-up the involvement of women in supporting and accelerating market uptake of renewable energy sources for heating and cooling. The project consortium consists of 12 partners from 8 countries and it is coordinated by Q-plan International Advisors, headquartered in Greece.
EUREC’s role
EUREC’s main contribution will focus on the communication and dissemination of the project and its results through three main objectives:
- Dissemination and communication plan, strategy and coordination of relevant activities
- Promotion of policy guides and recommendations
- Stakeholder engagement and mutual learning
Why W4RES?
Women hold great potential as agents of change, driving the clean energy transition and getting us closer to meeting the EU’s climate and energy targets for 2030. W4RES taps into this potential to support the uptake of renewable energy in heating and cooling (RHC), a market that urgently needs to shift more to RES.
W4RES phases
W4RES starts with a deep dive into framework conditions and regional specificities of 8 diverse yet representative markets in Europe, assessing enablers and barriers to RHC uptake. Building on gender-disaggregated insights from market actors and stakeholders as well as successful cases of women leading RHC projects, we develop a suite of flexible and cost-effective support measures with high reapplication potential.
W4RES then deploys measures on the field offering technical and business support to cut down project development timings and efforts as well as to sidestep legal, institutional and financial challenges, setting in motion feasible and sustainable business models fit to market. In parallel, W4RES empowers decision-makers to leverage a gender perspective into their projects and policies to improve acceptance, while raising awareness to foster demand for RHC.
A gender-responsive monitoring and evaluation framework
Along the way, a gender-responsive monitoring and evaluation framework will gauge the performance and impact of W4RES measures, providing the consortium with the intel required to turn them from solutions fit for a set of local challenges to integrated solutions that can address diverse policy and market needs across Europe. W4RES will use this intel as a catalyst to foster co-creation, mutual learning and international cooperation for frameworks more conducive to RHC uptake at local, regional national and EU level, based on cost effective support schemes and lower financing costs for RHC facilities.
In the process, W4RES will coordinate actions with relevant initiatives and offer tools to facilitate the reapplication of the project results, ensuring their long-term sustainability as viable solutions to supporting RHC uptake.
For further information, please contact info@eurec.be