Ending energy poverty starts with efficient homes

by Monica Frassoni, President of the European Alliance to Save Energy (EU-ASE)

This op-ed was published on CEEnergyNews


The upcoming Renovation Wave initiative will be crucial to address how energy poverty can be eradicated through accelerated renovation rate across the EU.

Today around 11 per cent of the EU population – 54 million Europeans, is affected by energy poverty. With real energy prices up by 70 per cent since 2004, energy is becoming a luxury item across the European Union, where 75 per cent of the current building stock has no or very weak energy performance requirements.

In 2016 alone, roughly 50 million Europeans were unable to keep their home warm. This means 1 European out of 10. In some countries, the situation is much worse, for example in Bulgaria where 46.5 per cent of people are unable to keep their homes adequately warm in winter. Similar numbers were reported regarding the late payment of utility bills or the presence of poor housing conditions. Recent data show that more than a third of the Greek population (35 per cent) struggles to keep up with their payments, the same is true for many Bulgarians (34 per cent), Croatians (30 per cent), and Romanians (29 per cent).

This already bad situation has worsened because of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, as the confinement measures adopted by national governments have made the energy needs of residential consumers grow. Moreover, many energy-poor people are the ‘essential workers’, facing low pay and risk as they have to keep working to keep essential services running. Lower-income households also pay proportionally more for energy. Due to the economic downturn caused by the crisis, many people also lost their job and families saw their income swiftly decline, with a new or increased difficulty in paying their energy bills.

A key step to tackle energy poverty is renovating buildings to make them more energy-efficient and would lower residents’ energy bills. In the case of low-income households, who are forced to spend a large share of their income on energy bills, energy efficiency measures allow them to live in a more comfortable and healthy environment while saving money they may need for other basic purposes, like food or healthcare.

There are few policy actions that the EU and national authorities should do immediately to boost buildings renovation and eradicate energy poverty.

First, Member States must speed up the implementation of existing legislation, starting with the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), which requires them to submit long-term renovation strategies. The deadline to transpose the directive was 10 March, but only seven Member States have done so to this date.

Governments should also introduce renovation grants and fiscal incentives. This would allow low-income households to renovate their homes for free or very cheaply. To this aim, it is key that a consistent part of the COVID-19 recovery plans is allocated to boosting building renovation at a national level. A quota of EU funds should also be directed towards renovation efforts, through the EU budget, the Just Transition mechanism and the recently announced recovery package (Next Generation EU).

At the EU level, the Commission has done very little so far to tackle energy poverty. In its Green Deal communication of December 2019, it only proposed to review existing laws which are not delivering, set up a platform for stakeholders, and provide “guidance” on energy poverty to Member States.

The upcoming Renovation Wave initiative will, therefore, be crucial to address how energy poverty can be eradicated through accelerated renovation rate across the EU. Boosting renovation to 3 per cent annually (from one per cent at present) would slash energy demand in buildings by 80 per cent, lifting millions of residents from energy poverty, while at the same time drastically cut related emissions.

Minimum standards legislation for existing buildings, as proposed by the energy committee of the European Parliament in its initiative report, would also boost renovation efforts.

Finally, the current energy efficiency targets must be increased and made binding at EU and Member State level.

If rightly implemented, these policies would have a tremendous social impact delivering to households across Europe increased comfort, cleaner indoor and outdoor air quality, reduced energy bills and better and more qualified local jobs.

It is the time for Europe to prove that the Green Deal pledge to “leave no one behind” is not just a slogan but a concrete political plan and that a just transition to a climate-neutral society is possible and desirable.

 

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Open letter: Include energy renovation as priority of German Presidency

In view of the German presidency of the Council of the European Union, EU-ASE has supported an open letter to German Federal Ministers Altmaier, Seehofer, and Schulze urging them to include building renovation as a priority of the presidency programme.

The letter states:

The Renovate Europe Campaign (REC) is following with interest the development of the Programme for the upcoming German Council Presidency. The proposed priorities that we have heard of through public events and announcements, have raised concern among our 39 partner companies and associations. Among those partners we have 15 national partners, including, from Germany, DENEFF.

Our concern arises from the fact that there has been absolutely no mention of energy renovation of the building stock within the proposals we have heard about (including in the 18-month Programme of the Council1), a very surprising omission considering the recent webinar that was organised by the German Permanent Representation in Brussels on the topic of the Renovation Wave. On this point, we urge you to ensure that the German Council Presidency supports and promotes the forthcoming Renovation Wave Strategy currently being prepared for publication in September by the European Commission as a crucial pillar of the forthcoming European economic recovery.

Our objective is to ask that before the Presidency starts on the 1st July, energy renovation of our ageing and inefficient building stock is included as a priority in the Final Council Presidency Programme, which we understand is still in the final stages of development.

 

Read the full letter here

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EUSEW 2020 blog | Renovation Wave: the immediate and powerful recovery button at the fingertips of EU policymakers

by Bertrand Deprez, Vice President EU Government Affairs at Schneider Electric & Céline Carré, Head of European Public Affairs at Saint Gobain, members of the European Alliance to Save Energy (EU-ASE)

This article was published in the blog of the EU Sustainable Energy Week 2020


There is one clear reboot button at the fingertips of European policy-makers, the label underneath carries the tag ‘Renovation Wave’. Rather than causing a re-start, bringing back an older configuration, pressing this button would put Europe on a new path to sustainable growth, with its citizens at the heart.

The European Union should therefore set aside any hesitation and reply with a straight ‘Yes’ to the question ‘Are you sure?’ that we usually get when rebooting our devices. ‘Yes’, because with 36% of CO2 emissions and 40% of energy consumption, buildings represent a major potential for Europe’s climate neutrality pathway. ‘Yes’, as fuelling renovation activities across Europe will translate into an immediate economic stimulus for the whole construction value chain, the biggest industrial employer in Europe. ‘Yes’, because the Renovation Wave will deliver comfortable and smart buildings that our citizens desire. Finally, ‘Yes’, as it will significantly contribute to the EU’s climate and energy targets and help to restore social cohesion in societies affected by the crisis.

Alongside the first push, political willingness will still be needed to give this wave the right shape and reap its promised benefits:

  • Firstly, the overarching goal: a clear strategy built on the long term goal of reaching a net zero-carbon building stock by 2050, should act as a catalyst to coordinate the efforts of the value chain and reach sufficient depth of renovation. Decarbonizing the existing stock will only happen with the right combination of making our buildings ultra-efficient (based on energy efficiency first) and relying on local renewable generation.
  • Secondly, the rate of renovation: political impetus such as the use of trigger points, minimum energy performance standards and the phase out of the worst performing buildings should be deployed to bring the renovation rate across Europe to 3% per year.
  • Thirdly, the scalability, which will come from simple and stable renovation programmes and related financing, e.g. via the setting of a dedicated Renovation Fund for All Europeans, stable tax incentives for renovation and leveraging of private finance. At the same time, there is a need to make full use of the potential of digitalization to improve buildings’ design and optimize their performance. It is time to tailor such initiatives in a segment-specific approach, encompassing both building renovation and retrofit of the technical building systems. With the current COVID-19 outbreak, Europe should seize the opportunity to renovate the less occupied public and non-residential buildings as well as homes. Citizens who spend more time indoors want to enjoy comfortable and healthy spaces.

A high impact renovation wave will be the key to creating hundreds of thousands of jobs across the continent. Research, innovation, industries: Europe already has all the ingredients to power this motor for the recovery. It just needs to press that button.

 

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EUSEW 2020 blog | Smart and the city: energy efficiency and sector integration for a #carbonneutralEU

by Julie Kjestrup, Interim Head of Group Public Affairs and Sustainability at Danfoss and Board Member of the European Alliance to Save Energy.

This article was published in the blog of the EU Sustainable Energy Week 2020


In the next few years, policy makers will have to rethink urban planning and market designs. For the cities of tomorrow to be sustainable, sector integration and energy efficiency must be at the heart of the policy framework.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the urgency of a Green Deal framework that delivers, to ensure that we do not go back to where we were but forward to where we want to be: to a sustainable society, protecting our climate and creating future-proof jobs and growth.

Leveraging urban efficiency is essential to getting there. Cities provide unique opportunities for energy and resource efficiency, using synergies between the elements of the urban energy system. This makes them ideal frontrunners to showcase new technologies and create attractive, future-proof places to live and work.

The key is to be smart in the way we use our (future) energy: this means smart about how much energy we consume in the first place. In other words: energy efficiency first. Capturing the full potential of energy efficiency will allow a faster roll-out of renewables and lead us on the most cost-efficient path to carbon neutrality. In fact, recent research from Denmark shows that the extra costs for reaching Denmark’s new and ambitious 70% CO2 reduction by 2030-target can be significantly reduced by investing in existing energy efficiency technology in buildings and industries.

It also means smart about how we use, re-use and store our energy: through interconnections, integration and managing demand and supply in an efficient way we can stabilise our grid. We can use the excess heat from a nearby factory, data centre or supermarket to warm or cool houses, or to charge an electric vehicle. By creating synergies between sectors like buildings, industry, power generators and transport, sector integration is integral to reach decarbonisation.

According to a forthcoming research from Navigant, implementation of existing technology solutions for sector integration, energy efficient heating and cooling of buildings and electrified transport can bridge about half of the gap needed to reach the 1.5°C target in urban areas. At the same time, these reductions will contribute with more than one-third of total needed national emissions reductions in Europe. It can also save money. The Heat Roadmap Europe studies show that utilising energy system synergies and exploiting energy efficiency can save Europe 13% of primary energy use and reduce total energy-system costs by approximately 70 billion euros per year compared to other decarbonisation scenarios.

The future is here already: EnergyLab Nordhavn is an important part of Copenhagen’s overall goal of being climate neutral by 2025. A ‘living lab’ on efficient and smart sector integration, it will house 40,000 residents and 40,000 workplaces when done. Going forward, projects like this must become norm, and that means integrating our own thinking in terms of levers of the future energy policy framework.

The Green Deal framework enables that by putting a holistic vision forward that can create a more resilient, efficient and consumer-based system, and add jobs and growth along the way. To make this happen, policy makers will have to rethink urban planning and market designs. For the cities of tomorrow to be sustainable, sector integration must sit at the heart of the policy framework.

Additional information:

https://www.danfoss.com/en/about-danfoss/insights-for-tomorrow/energy-efficiency/

https://www.danfoss.com/en/about-danfoss/insights-for-tomorrow/district-energy/

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We must invest today in the buildings of tomorrow

by Bertrand Deprez, EU-ASE Board Vice-chair & Mohammed Chahim, Member of the European Parliament

This op-ed was published on Euractiv


In the COVID-19 aftermath, making our buildings energy efficient is key to reconcile Europe’s climate objectives with rapid economic recovery. To get this done we need an ambitious policy roadmap at EU level.

The European Union is facing a great challenge: how to quickly re-build Europe’s economy in the context of Covid-19 while ensuring to keep itself on the path to become climate neutral by 2050.

Against this background, investing in decarbonising buildings is key to reconcile climate objectives and economic recovery, in a virtuous way. Indeed, the renovation wave is one of the key pillars of the European Green Deal, which should be at the core of the post-COVID-19 recovery plan.

The reasons beyond this are easy to grasp. Buildings are the single largest energy consumer with approximately 40% of EU energy consumption. This value is estimated to go up to 50% if the construction industry and its upstream value chain are included.

Moreover, as urbanisation increases sharply, up to 68% by 2050 versus 55% today, with a multiplication by 2 of existing building stock globally, in Europe, the volume of floor additions could top 20 billion square meters by 2050.

The building sector represents today 7-10% of the workforce in OECD, a major source of employment, hence economic growth and social welfare, with SMEs contributing to more than 70% of the value-added in EU’s building sector. This represents about 18 million direct jobs.

Buildings are where people live and work, and where people spend 95% of their time. Enabling the transition towards buildings of the future could enable new ways to manage energy through local energy communities and ‘prosumers’ (consumers who both consume and produce energy, usually electricity).

Finally, Europe has a lot of strengths in this area, with leading players covering the whole spectrum of the value chain (construction industry, technology providers, utilities, services business, and specialised software companies).

In this context, investing in energy efficiency in buildings is a unique opportunity to realise a “Just transition”. Just transition because contributing to creating local jobs, pulling out low-income people from energy poverty, providing decent and comfortable environments, and on-boarding citizens in a local vision of the energy transition.

Buildings of the future can be at the heart of the green transition in Europe if we manage to combine the principle of energy efficiency first with the deployment of distributed energy resources and the rise of digital technologies. These are the conditions for the ultra-efficient buildings of tomorrow to become the critical pillar of a fully decarbonised energy system.

Achieving that requires adopting a system efficiency approach for our buildings, our urban districts, and our cities. Such an effort would be worthwhile because it could transform our buildings into prosumers and fundamentally change how people, how end-users consume and produce their energy.

For all of that to become a reality, we need an ambitious policy roadmap at EU level that shall focus on three points:

Going for an integrated policy approach based on a combination of regulatory and financial incentives with the objective to make buildings net zero-carbon by 2050 in Europe

Mobilising investment to support the deployment of technologies that are critical to achieve both efficiency (e.g. insultation, district heating, digital tools like BIM, electric vehicles, heat pump, solar panel) and demand-side flexibility to accelerate the integration of buildings into a fully decarbonised energy system.

Scaling-up the renovation rate by making of ‘building renovation’ a strategic value chain and bringing all players of the value chain to work together and develop a marketplace for building renovation at European level

In addition, at the EU level, we need to make the renovation wave initiative one of the strong drivers to stimulate our economies across Europe. In this light, it is key to accelerate energy efficiency in the building space, including by implementing existing rules and adopt new financial and regulatory incentives to promote building renovation.

This would allow building the energy efficient homes and buildings of tomorrow, thus paving the way for both economic recovery and the green transition.

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