How the NetZeroCities Programme is helping Budapest retrofit its home

Budapest is addressing some of the most impactful climate consequences through the NetZeroCities Pilot Cities Programme, led by Climate KIC.

Budapest's building stock is responsible for roughly 60% of the city's carbon emissions — around 16% of Hungary's total.

Climate KIC response: Budapest CARES

Budapest is one of the 112 cities participating in the EU Mission to deliver 100 climate-neutral and smart cities and the Pilot Cities Programme, led by Climate KIC. As part of the programme, Budapest will use the associated grant funding to set up a Climate Agency, focusing on the renovation of homes. 

Its first task is mapping the problem properly, via two parallel surveys:

• a socioeconomic survey of who owns homes and buildings across the city
• a technical survey cataloguing building typologies, including heritage stock

We are running a socioeconomic survey to understand who owns apartments and buildings in the city and whether they are single family homes, for example. The other survey will provide us with a technical overview of the typologies of buildings. We have a lot of historical buildings in Budapest that we need to preserve, but they are also a big challenge to our efforts to reduce energy consumption.

Ada Ámon, Head of Department for Climate and Environmental Affairs

Together, these will let the agency group homes into clusters that represent meaningful savings potential at scale. Those clusters are what make the market interesting to banks and financial institutions, who the agency will then invite to design retrofit financing schemes tailored to each group.

Crucially, the agency operates with a mandate to act independently of the political and administrative constraints that slow down the municipality itself. This is a structural advantage which explains why the Climate KIC model was chosen for this pilot.

What comes next

Over the programme's two-year run, the goal is for the agency to build real expertise in Budapest's housing market and financing landscape, strengthen ties with financial partners, and begin securing uptake of its first tailored retrofit offers. It's also building working relationships with civil society partners, including the Hungarian Energy Efficiency Institute and Habitat for Humanity, to tackle energy poverty alongside efficiency.

Ada Ámon, Head of Department for Climate and Environmental Affairs in Budapest, is candid about what the agency can and can't do alone: its financial offers will depend on how much of the available grant funding reaches homeowners rather than intermediaries, and the right approach differs sharply between a prefabricated apartment block and a single-family home.

Ámon is equally clear that the agency is not a substitute for deeper reform: lasting climate neutrality will require faster, less bureaucratic municipal governance across Central and Eastern Europe, not just in Hungary.

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