On 24-25 November 2021, the 2nd Project Meeting for the CAN Capitalisation phase took place online (sadly not in Liège as planned, due to the Covid-19 pandemic).
This meeting focused on the adjustments of previous CAN approaches. All partners presented their adjustments for the CAN face-to-face and multiplicator approaches in a virtual poster gallery session, and discussed especially about opportunities and difficulties for the development of an optimal tailored approach for the SME sector. The major challenge proved to be to find the right “door opener” to interest SMEs for the issues of energy saving despite many other prevailing problems, e. g. imposed by the pandemic. All agree that it is necessary to develop offers that clearly show that no additional burden will be imposed, on the contrary that the enterprise will have additional benefits.
Associated partner from the municipality of Arnhem explained the city’s approach towards business parks and gave an overview of the experiences made. The evaluation of the instruments used so far revealed a rather low impact. Therefore, the municipality decided to develop a more targeted approach and concentrate more on specific target group: business parks with favourable conditions (own ambitious climate targets), enterprises which own their business buildings, and business parks with active associations as multiplicators to reach the enterprises. The cooperation with partners, e. g. the Green Business Club, is also effective.
In the discussion the partnership concluded again that one major problem is “to get behind the front door of an enterprise or business”. In this way a basic recommendation developed by the CAN partners for residential areas could be transferred: Organisations trusted by the SMEs should communicate about the possibilities and subsidies rather than staff from the municipality. Face-to-face communication (e. g. energy cafés) is much more effective than digital communication.