ADELPHI CONSULT GMBH

Their core work

Adelphi is a Berlin-based sustainability consultancy that provides policy advisory, market analysis, and capacity-building services primarily in the energy efficiency and climate sectors. In H2020 projects, they typically serve as a country expert or dissemination partner, contributing market knowledge, stakeholder engagement, and policy analysis rather than technical R&D. Their work spans energy renovation financing, industrial energy efficiency, cold chain optimization, and municipal investment planning — always at the intersection of policy, markets, and implementation.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their H2020 journey began in 2016 with flood risk management (SYSTEM-RISK), a clear outlier from what followed. From 2019 onward, they pivoted entirely to energy efficiency — spanning buildings, consumer products, cold chains, industrial heat recovery, and municipal energy planning. This shift suggests a deliberate strategic move to concentrate on energy transition advisory, where their policy and market expertise has the most commercial value.

Adelphi is consolidating around energy transition implementation support — expect them to focus on municipal energy planning, industrial decarbonization business cases, and financing mechanisms for efficiency upgrades.

How they like to work

Adelphi operates almost exclusively as a third-party contributor (5 of 6 projects), meaning they are subcontracted by consortium partners rather than appearing as direct beneficiaries. They have never coordinated an H2020 project. Despite this supporting role, their network is remarkably broad — 100 unique partners across 25 countries — indicating they are a trusted, go-to consultancy that multiple consortia bring in for country expertise and policy analysis.

Despite their third-party status, Adelphi has built an extensive network of 100 unique consortium partners across 25 countries, reflecting their reputation as a reliable subcontractor that European consortia regularly call upon for policy and market expertise.

What sets them apart

Adelphi occupies a specific niche: they are not a technology developer or research lab, but a policy-to-market bridge. They translate EU energy policy into actionable market insights, financing models, and capacity-building programs. For consortium builders, they offer something hard to find — a consultancy with deep energy policy knowledge that can operate across multiple EU countries as a flexible third-party contributor without the overhead of a full beneficiary partner.

Highlights from their portfolio

• EUCF
  Longest-running project (2019-2024) focused on European City Facility — directly supports municipalities in developing sustainable energy investment concepts across multiple countries.
• EMB3Rs
  Most technically distinctive project — an open-source tool for matching industrial excess heat/cold with demand, combining energy modelling with business case development.
• SYSTEM-RISK
  Their only non-energy project and only direct partner role — a large-scale flood risk assessment initiative that reveals their earlier climate resilience expertise.