Three years, 270 people, 140 organisations, 20 recommendations. This week, the European Life BE FREE project came to a close — and we wanted to share what stood out most to us.
The starting point was simple: Belgium renovates at 0.8%/year, when we need 4%. Financing usually gets framed as the main obstacle. But after three years of roundtables with the financial sector, construction, local authorities and Europe, one thing became clear: the solutions largely already exist. The real challenge is scaling them.
A few things we keep coming back to:
→ The main trigger for renovation is usually not energy — it's the kitchen or the bathroom. You don't convince people by talking kWh.
→ Renovating building by building won't get us there. Thinking at neighbourhood level — heat networks, group purchasing, co-ownership associations — changes the economics.
→ Access to financing isn't the whole story: roughly one in four Belgian households simply can't take on a loan. Without a targeted answer for them, we risk a two-speed market.
→ A stable regulatory framework matters as much as the instruments themselves. Every new plan that replaces the last one recreates uncertainty — and uncertainty freezes the market.
→ Sharing what works between pioneers and followers is still underused. We underestimate how much showing "what worked elsewhere" speeds things up.
At BGBC, we're picking up several of these workstreams, alongside BEEFiC, building on what Life BE FREE has already learned — not starting from scratch.
Our members will soon be voting on our 2027 task forces — and these findings will definitely feed into how we shape that selection.
Curious to hear which of these resonates most with what you're seeing on the ground.
Read Life BE FREE's final report