Synthesis Report on the assessment of Member States' building renovation strategies

The European building stock consumes approximately 40% of primary energy and it is responsible for 36% of the EU greenhouse emissions. A significant reduction of building energy demand is a requisite to meet Europe’s GHG emissions reduction targets. The Article 4 of the Energy Efficiency Directive requires Member States "to establish a long-term strategy beyond 2020 for mobilising investment in the renovation of residential and commercial buildings with a view to improving the energy performance of the building stock. In order to transpose the Directive and to increase the rates and depth of building renovation, the Member States were asked to develop their first renovation strategies and provide them with their third NEEAPs, due by 30th April 2014. The JRC undertook an assessment of 31 national/regional building renovation strategies submitted by the Member States. The present report summarises the assessment performed by JRC on the received strategies. The analysis assessed and evaluated the compliance with all the items of Article 4 and checked if they were adequately addressed in each national renovation strategy.JRC.F.7-Renewables and Energy Efficienc

Analysis of the annual reports 2017 under the Energy Efficiency Directive: Summary Report

This report discusses the progress towards the 2020 Energy Efficiency targets and towards the implementation of the provisions of the Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/EU (EED), providing an overview of the main energy trends in the European Union with special focus on the period 2005-2015. It is based on the last EUROSTAT data available and on the analysis provided by Member States within their Annual Reports 2017, under the EED.JRC.C.2-Energy Efficiency and Renewable

Assessing Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBs) development in Europe

Abstract Decarbonising the energy sector is crucial to reach future climate and energy goals. As established by the Energy Performance of Building Directive recast, Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBs) are the mandatory building target in Europe for all new buildings from 2021 onwards. In the light of the approaching deadline, this paper assesses the development of NZEBs in Europe based on the most recent collected data and information. This paper provides an overview of the implementation of national definitions and energy performance values for new, existing, residential, and non-residential buildings in Member States. It evaluates the differences with the established European benchmark and cost-optimal levels. An overview of the most commonly implemented technologies in NZEBs is given together with costs and the relative projections over next decades. Finally, quantitative data on the NZEBs diffusion in Member States are given as recently assessed. The evolution of the NZEB concept and the future NZEBs role is also forecasted. The results assume a strategic value in the light of future targets for the building sector, showing the progress made by Member States in relation to different NZEBs aspects. They provide a comprehensive analysis of the European NZEBs implementation depicting a positive overall progress improvement for NZEBs definitions, uptake, technology development, and energy performance levels. Next challenges and barriers are outlined and appear mainly related to NZEBs retrofit

Practices and opportunities for Energy Performance Contracting in the public sector in EU Member States

The public sector is one of the key users of energy in Europe. Although, the relative energy consumption of the public sector is rather small, i.e. “only” about 5-10% of the total energy demand of European Member States, with an annual energy bill €47 billion (Borg & Co. et al. 2003), there are several reasons to focus on improving the energy performance of public buildings and public installations.JRC.C.2-Energy Efficiency and Renewable

Comfort Models and Building design in the Mediterranean Zone

In the presence of renewed research and application efforts towards low or zero energy buildings, the issues of fine-tuning comfort and fully understanding its connection with energy use are becoming increasingly relevant both for research and application, and mostly so in the Mediterranean zone. This paper discusses how the evolution of knowledge on comfort and its incorporation into international Standards, inter alia in the form of comfort categories for different types of buildings, can influence the design, operation and evaluation of buildings in the Mediterranean area. We discuss some of the implications, obtained by the authors via dynamic simulation software complemented by pre and post processing tools purposely prepared to ameliorate and speed the treatment of comfort data. We present an optimization methodology, some results in a choice of climates, and the current limitations and needs for improvement of the indexes defined in the standards. Critical analysis and results presented here have been developed partially under the IEE projects Commoncense and ThermCo

Review of 50 years of EU energy efficiency policies for buildings

The reduction of energy demand in buildings through the adoption of energy efficiency policy is a key pillar of the European Union (EU) climate and energy strategy. Energy efficiency first emerged in the EU energy policy agenda in the 1970s and was progressively transformed with shifting global and EU energy and climate policies and priorities. The paper offers a review of EU energy policies spanning over the last half century with a focus on policy instruments to encourage measures on energy efficiency in new and existing buildings. Starting from early policies set by the EU in response to the Oil Embargo in the 1973, the paper discusses the impact of EU policies in stimulating energy efficiency improvements in the building sector ranging from the SAVE Directive to the recently 2018 updated Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and Energy Efficiency Directive. The review explores the progress made over the last 50 years in addressing energy efficiency in buildings and highlights successes as well as remaining challenges. It discusses the impact of political priorities in reshaping how energy efficiency is addressed by EU policymakers, leading to a holistic approach to buildings, and provides insights and suggestions on how to further exploit the EU potential to save energy from buildings

Analysis of the annual reports 2018 under the Energy Efficiency Directive

This report discusses the progress towards the 2020 Energy Efficiency targets and towards the implementation of the provisions of the Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/EU (EED), providing an overview of the main energy trends in the European Union with special focus on the period 2005-2016. It is based on the last EUROSTAT data available and on the analysis provided by Member States within their Annual Reports 2018, under the EED.JRC.C.2-Energy Efficiency and Renewable

Key economic drivers enabling municipal renewable energy communities’ benefits in the Italian context

Community energy is a buzzword that has historically included various type of experiences. In 2018, the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) legally defined renewable energy communities (RECs). Based on the first pilot projects and on the Italian legal framework, a possible REC configuration of municipal initiative with a high replicability potential is one in which a photovoltaic system is installed in educational buildings and shares energy with neighbouring residential consumers. This analysis presents an economical evaluation of different possible scenarios depending on variables such as solar radiation, system capacity, fraction of self-consumption within the REC, installation costs and energy prices. All the scenarios identified and analysed show positive economic indexes, although the energy and economic results may significantly vary depending on the variables studied. In the analysed case studies, the Net Present Value (after 20 years) is between kEUR 51 and kEUR 478; the internal rate of return is between 9.5% and 88%; the payback time is between 13.6 years and 1.1 years. The results of this analysis are relevant as they allow us to better understand the critical factors that can enable REC in providing local economic and social benefits to have a real impact on energy poverty or on the provision of local social services

Progress of the Member States in implementing the Energy Performance of Building Directive

Overall, the EPBD policy framework laid down the foundation for:i) setting cost-optimal minimum energy performance standards in new buildings and existing buildings under major renovation;ii) ensuring that prospective buyers or renters are well informed through Energy Performance Certificates and thereby encouraged to choose higher than minimum standards in their decision making processes;iii) speeding up the rate at which investors engage in energy efficiency projectsthrough national long-term renovation strategies and financemechanisms.In accordance with the policy assessment of 2017 it is expected that the EPBD islikely to deliver the expected impacts by 2020, with 48.9 Mtoe additional final energy savings and a reduction of 63 Mt of CO2.However, the new Climate agenda set higher ambition targets and together with the Covid-19 crisis, the scenario has changed consistently and the next decade will be very challenging. The energy renovation of buildings can be a pillar of both the European decarbonisation process and the economic recovery after the pandemic.This report provides a snap shot of the EPBD implementation progresses by Member States over the last years. In particular, the focus is mainly on: cost-optimal calculations to set minimum energy performance requirements, Energy Performance Certificates (EPC), Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (NZEB), financial incentives and market barriers, Long-term Renovation Strategies (LTRS). In order to contextualize the European scenario, some general trendsare presented and discussed in the introduction

Identification of cost-optimal and NZEB refurbishment levels for representative climates and building typologies across Europe

The energy consumptions of the building stock are playing a central role in the energy policy of the European Union. While the Member States are applying the Directives in force, the European Commission is working to update the regulatory framework. Specifically, it is necessary to achieve the great unrealized potential for energy savings in existing buildings. With this aim, the nearly zero-energy building (NZEB) target was introduced, and a comparative methodology framework to calculate cost-optimal levels of minimum energy performance requirements was proposed. This study focuses on the issue of building renovation, and it presents the results obtained with the application of a cost-optimal calculation method for identifying proper retrofit measures to reach cost-optimal levels and NZEB levels. The assessment takes into account an exhaustive set of passive and active renovation options and it was extended to various building types of 60s-70s (residential and non-residential) in a wide range of representative European climatic conditions. A very relevant energy-saving potential was found for all cost-optimal benchmarks, and in many cases, the obtained NZEB refurbishments have resulted interesting also from an economic point of view