On May 22nd and 23rd 2023, the National Federation of Tunisian Municipalities, one of the two Tunisian partners of the SOLE project, hosted a two-day meeting to facilitate the exchange of experiences and best practices on energy requalification of public buildings among the SOLE partners and create synergies with GreenBuilding, a project also co-financed by ENI CBC MED and focusing on public buildings' energy refurbishment.

The first day of the meeting represented a precious chance for all partners to present and discuss the key policy reccomendations on cost-effective energy requalifications of public buildings which were expressed by technicians, professionals, trade associations, institutions and policy makers at local level: the SOLE project wanted to make the stakeholders' voices heard, thus it included a series of participatory meetings, like the #SOLEenergyTALKS, to gather local suggestions on how to facilitate energy requalifications of public buildings. Local findings were presented and compared during the Tunis meeting, to allow the National Federation of Tunisian Municipalities to finalise a report on the common policy reccommendations. Once published, this report will contribute to facilitate the planning, implementation, monitoring and funding of energy requalification interventions on public buildings across the Mediterranean area.

During the second day of the meeting, the SOLE team visited the Mohamed Kassab Hospital, where an energy efficiency refurbishment was carried out by sister project GreenBuilding. The building is located in Manouba and thanks to the intervention, which included the installation of a capacitor bank (a group of capacitors that store electrical energy) and the thermal insulation of the roofs of the operating theatre and its annexes, it will generate an energy gain of about 12 MWh/year. The joint visit allowed for a fruitful exchange on the best and most cost-efficient technical solutions used in pilot sites of both the SOLE and GreenBuilding projects.

The SOLE partners also got the chance to meet a group of students from the Ecole Nationale d'Architecture et d'Urbanisme de Tunis (ENAU) who presented their work on energy efficient buildings and together they visited a site in restoration which showed how traditional building techniques were actually eco-conscious. SOLE is co-financed by Programme ENI CBC MED: it brings together 7 countries in the Mediterranean area to support cost-effective and innovative energy rehabilitations of public buildings while encouraging behavioural change in people and policy makers to reduce energy consumption.