Budgetary constraints are often cited as a big barrier in implementing energy efficiency policies and measures in both municipalities and regions. The survey revealed that the municipalities sometimes focus only on a limited amount of existing tools and programmes on European, national or regional level, and the lack of their internal capacity or insufficient awareness about all possible sources available for them are some of the reasons of this situation.

The ambition of this section is to introduce the support for energy efficiency financing on European level in orderly way as well as indicate other possibilities either on national levels or in self-financing.

National sources summary in a comprehensive way for CE countries, namely Italy, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Poland is described in Transnational Energy Efficiency Financing Strategy, the other crucial output of the BOOSTEE-CE project dealing with energy efficiency financing.