Before the creation of the revolving fund, municipal investment in improving the energy efficiency of public buildings was not moving forward fast enough to comply with the ambitions of Almada's Sustainable Energy Action Plan under the Covenant of Mayors-Europe. Therefore, Almada used the instrument of a revolving fund in combination with the internal contracting mechanism to accelerate public investment in retrofitting its municipal buildings. The most important innovation of this instrument of combining a revolving fund with internal contracting is the "shared benefits" approach, which encompasses different sharing schemes linking the fund and the "client department" based on the characteristics of the project. This ensures that the fund is replenished and gives extra motivation for different departments to invest in energy efficiency. A non-compliance procedure is also included, meaning that a client department can lose the shared benefit or even have a penalty imposed on their budget, if they fail to operate the system correctly.
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