Energy Transition in Europe | www.energy-cities.eu

On sort à peine du « quoi qu’il en coûte », et déjà on entend retentir les sirènes de la crise des finances publiques locales. Avec la crise énergétique et le retour de l’inflation, la question budgétaire se retrouve au centre des préoccupations des collectivités. Le tout dans un contexte où les ressources humaines sont encore en … Continuer la lecture de « Saurez-vous faire la différence entre sobriété et austérité ? »

Building renovations, like those encouraged under the draft Energy Performance of Buildings directive, are key to improving people's well-being and reducing emissions, but they must be flexible and rolled out with social safeguards, writes Ciarán Cuffe.

The overhaul of the EU's Energy Performance Buildings Directive (EPBD) - which seeks to cut energy use, curb household bills and slash greenhouse gas emissions - offers a major opportunity to decarbonise the EU's building stock and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

With significant buying power, corporations and businesses can support the development of energy efficiency measures faster than households

Excess heat produced across Europe could almost power the entire region but preventing this waste is largely being ignored as a solution to the energy crisis, say environmental experts.

Energy communities can make an enormous contribution to climate goals but their efficiency and effectiveness can be boosted, smartEn advises.

Soaring energy prices and gas supply disruptions are mounting pressure on Europe to renovate its ageing, inefficient buildings as governments scramble to protect citizens from big bills.

Buildings are in the spotlight as the EU contemplates a long, hard winter on the back of an energy price crisis intensified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Already the EU’s ‘Fit for 55’ climate package aimed to double renovation rates by 2030 and pioneer minimum energy performance standards for buildings. The REPowerEU proposals – issued in response to the Russian invasion – complement this with a solar rooftop plan and raise the EU’s overall energy efficiency goal for 2030 from 9% to 13%.

Europe faces a major challenge to renovate its building stock and achieve its carbon emission targets. Doing so will not be achieved through public funds alone, but also requires investment from private funds. Public authorities can help to leverage private investment through financial instruments, which can incentivise investments by overcoming market failures and distortions.
A number of financial instruments have been tested and used and are ready to be replicated throughout Europe, and the Member States will need to be ready to implement financial instruments in their operational programmes for the next financial period of 2021-2027.

This policy roadmap sets out the necessary steps to introduce whole-life carbon considerations and align the provisions of the EPBD (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive) with climate-neutrality goals. It argues that the 2022 EPBD recast should ensure a comprehensive vision of a carbon neutral building and construction sector, and set the requirements and clear triggers to reduce whole-life carbon emissions of the building stock.

It is about time the UK government got to grips with retrofitting existing housing to scale up home energy efficiency across the country. One way to do this would be to establish a one-stop shop on every high street; offering trusted advice, recommendations for trained suppliers, and help with grants and other incentives. Our struggling town centres could do with the community buzz of a genuinely useful venue and there are plenty of empty commercial properties to choose from. It could provide employment, generate training locally, encourage re-skilling of workforces, and help us reach our climate goals. Plus our houses might actually get warmer.

If high-income countries are to decarbonize fast enough to stay within their fair-share of Paris-compliant carbon budgets, then urgent climate mitigation tasks – like building renewable energy capacity, insulating buildings, expanding public transit, innovating and distributing more efficient technologies, regenerating land, etc – need to happen very quickly.

Faced with an energy crisis, Positive Energy Neighbourhoods (PENs) could become Europe’s solution for sustainable and energy-efficient urban spaces as it moves forward with the green transition, write Maarten De Groote and Gabi Kaiser.  

The energy transition is about more than switching power carriers. Replacing fossil fuels with renewable forms of energy generation is perhaps the most significant change the world will make in its attempts to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change. Still, it is not as simple as a straight swap. It requires a complete overhaul of how we live and interact with our world. This is where energy efficiency and the efficient use of energy comes in

The Swedish city is a pioneer of its own in the field of  sustainability. One of its praiseworthy initiatives was the creation of the LFM30 roadmap to climate-neutral construction. In essence, this is a large-scale collaborative platform among all the main local stakeholders involved in the construction industry, working in accord with the public administration to achieve a climate-neutral status for their city.

The European Commission is revising the economic assumptions behind its energy and climate laws package presented last year, saying sky-high gas prices fuelled by the war in Ukraine have strengthened the case for more ambitious energy efficiency goals.

The findings contained in this report suggest that decarbonisation in new buildings in the EU is happening too slowly and inconsistently. A reasonable conclusion to draw from this is that Europe’s 2050 decarbonisation objectives will be at high risk unless MS building policies can be made to provide stronger support. Government policies differ in several important ways when it comes to “moving the needle” on new building standards, both in terms of being consistent with the NZEB definition as laid out in the EPBD, and in terms of ambition levels on building-sector decarbonisation.

We need to work out new ways of living—on individual, local, regional, national, and international scales—to prosper without economic growth and to develop our human potential without robbing the opportunities of future generations.