Launch of the Efficient Buildings thematic community ‘MEDNICE’


In the Mediterranean area cooling (and heating) as well as low building standards induce high consumption and expenses. And this, even though a wealth of natural resources and a conducive climate do provide excellent conditions for greening residential and public buildings.

The Horizontal Project MEDNICE, co-funded by the Interreg Mediterranean programme, aims at setting up a MED community of building experts and practitioners in order to share common public building challenges and solutions. Covering 13 countries, from Portugal to Cyprus, the project will accompany and use outputs from 10 so-called modular projects. The projects deal with capacity-building and awareness-raising, designing and testing of smart building and financing solutions.

During the launch of MEDNICE last week in the French city of Nice, representatives from the European Commission stressed the role of MEDNICE as a privileged partner of the European institutions for linking EU building policies with the specific challenges in the Mediterranean Basin.

Energy Cities is one of six European partners in this project. Our mission is to capitalise the results: together with partners, we will promote and further develop a broad range of training and financing tools for the Mediterranean area. Moreover, by creating the “EEB Hub”, a loose alliance of committed stakeholders from the green building sector, we can sense the needs and gaps and advocate enabling policies towards the EU level.

The MEDNICE project, coordinated by the City of Nice (France) and its Euromed network, relies on the competences of five European partners :