The finale pulls it all together and lands on something genuinely hopeful. Nicholas introduces the RENEW-IT project in full — an EU-funded initiative running right now across France, Germany, and Spain that's testing a simple but radical idea: what if energy-poor residents didn't just benefit from retrofits, but actually did the work themselves? With residents handling roughly 30% of tasks under professional supervision, the project cuts labor costs by around 15% — which on a €50,000 retrofit translates to €7,500 per home, often the difference between impossible and possible.

But the deeper story is about what happens to people. RENEW-IT is designed to create career pathways out of energy poverty: 600 former energy-poor residents are expected to transition into retrofit sector jobs, and the goal is 6,000 residents affected ...