Report by the European Institute on Building Performance on the progress of compliance with Article 4 of the Energy Efficiency Directive
The Energy Efficiency Directive (EED, 2012/27 / EU) introduced in 2012 a new, important dimension to the legal environment for energy savings in buildings. Article 4 of the above Directive requires Member States, for the first time, to draw up their National Strategy for the renovation of their building stock, and thus to fill the large policy gap concerning their existing buildings.
This study focuses on 10 Member States (Austria, Belgium-Brussels region), Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom), countries that submitted their strategic plans within three months of the deadline April 2014 and were selected by the European Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) as they present a great variety, both in the types of buildings and in the prevailing climatic conditions.
The report assesses countries for each of the five requirements of Article 4 of the EED:
- review of the national building stock,
- finding cost-effective approaches to renovations,
- policies and measures to stimulate cost-effective radical renovations of buildings,
- a future-oriented perspective that will guide investment decisions,
- a substantiated estimate of the expected energy savings and general benefits.
Based on the above evaluation method, the BPIE concluded that three strategies do not meet the requirements of the Directive (Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands), another three are partially harmonised with it (France, Germany, and Belgium – Brussels Region), while the other four are acceptable but show room for improvement (Czech Republic, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom). Some strategies include elements that are evaluated as good practices, such as financial support or broad stakeholder involvement, but lag in other areas, which vary from country to country.
Article 4 required all Member States to develop strategies to provide incentives for investment in radical renovation of buildings, in the sense of providing guarantees to property owners (to invest in their renovation) and the market to strengthen the chain of suppliers. The strategies of the 10 projects under consideration do not seem to achieve the above objectives.
The report concludes that, in order to achieve the required, in the long run, transformation of the existing building potential, the benefits of building renovation should be assessed not only in terms of energy savings, carbon emissions and costs, but also on an economic basis. social and environmental impact. Policy packages and support measures need to be developed in more detail to provide effective incentives to invest in radical renovation. It is also proposed to provide more effective guidance from the European Commission and to resubmit most strategic plans after the implementation of corrective interventions. In addition, 8 months after the European Commission deadline, 6 of the 28 EU Member States (Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, and Slovenia) have not yet submitted strategic renovation plans.
This is the introductory text published by BPIE and concerns the report on “Renovation Strategies of Selected European Countries”.