Tapping into the potential of women for supporting renewable energy in the heating and cooling market (W4RES)

Although women are important climate change actors and bring numerous competencies that could accelerate the 2030 climate and energy targets, they are currently still underrepresented in this field in Europe.

The heating and cooling market represents 50% of the total energy consumed annually in Europe for either domestic or industrial purposes. Given the high dependence on fossil fuels and the challenges of climate change, it is more urgent than ever to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. W4RES therefore delivers a set of solutions to significantly and measurably reduce the time and effort required to develop and deploy Renewable Heating and Cooling (RHC) projects. An online platform and regional hubs provide networking, information exchange and co-creation activities to define new measures to promote RHC market adoption.

The Steinbeis-Europa-Center supports about 50 women-led renewable heating and cooling projects in promoting the marketability of the solutions. It coordinates the selection of projects and communication through so-called key account managers. Specifically, it supports the projects in terms of business planning, access to financing, networking and mentoring. It also undertakes the evaluation and validation of the marketability and market acceptance measures.

Further information:

• Project name acronym: W4RES- Women for market uptake of renewable heating and cooling
• Funding: European Commission
• Funding budget for all partners: 2.9 M EUR
• Participating countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway and Slovakia
• Duration: 11/2020 - 10 /2023