Municipality of Legrad and Regional Energy Agency North are in the final stages of developing a financial instrument to help residents fund energy-efficiency upgrades to their homes, alongside a new AI chatbot to support both the financing scheme and everyday municipal services.
The financing instrument comes in two variants. Model A is a direct municipal grant aimed at residents who cannot or do not wish to take out a loan, covering simpler renovation measures, with citizens contributing at least twice the subsidy amount. Model B combines a higher municipal subsidy with the resident’s own funds and a commercial bank loan; it is reserved for creditworthy applicants and allows a broader range of works.
Eligible measures are ranked by necessity, cost and impact, and include ceiling and wall insulation, replacement of inefficient windows, roof and facade insulation, and heating-system upgrades. Partial measures also qualify, since even modest works cut energy consumption.
To scale the scheme, Legrad and REA North aim to recruit at least five more municipalities in Koprivnica-Krizevci County, coordinated through a county-wide mayors’ forum and an investment forum bringing together mayors, residents and banks. A parallel analysis of the local banking sector, covering loan types, terms, minimum amounts and required risk guarantees, is steering the model toward cash loans. Both financial models will be tested on residents by the end of year 2026.
In parallel, REA North is in the development stage of an upgrade of its existing VIREAS platform into a dedicated AI municipal assistant. Building on the platform of 2024 VIREAS system and then developed Map of solar potential of the Municipality, the municipal chatbot will answer questions about the financing instrument and municipal services around the clock (24/7), easing pressure on staff and reducing repetitive phone calls.
Residents will reach it from any device and ask questions in Croatian, Hungarian or English, with automatic language detection. The assistant draws on roughly 400 priority documents using combined semantic and keyword search, offering step-by-step guidance with references to source files. Each user receives 1,000 free queries a month, with unused ones carried over, and operation is secured through the end of 2027, with a go/no-go review set for January 2028.
