Newsletter #5 | April 2019

The Commission calls for a climate neutral Europe by 2050

The European Commission in November 2018 has adopted a strategic long-term vision for a prosperous, modern, competitive and climate neutral economy by 2050 – A Clean Planet for all.

The strategy shows how Europe can lead the way to climate neutrality by investing into realistic technological solutions, empowering citizens, and aligning action in key areas such as industrial policy, finance, or research – while ensuring social fairness for a just transition.
Following the invitation by the European Council in March 2018, the Commission's vision for a climate-neutral future covers nearly all EU policies and is in line with the Paris Agreement objective to keep temperature increase to well below 2 °C, and pursue efforts to keep it to 1,5 °C. For the EU to lead the world towards climate neutrality means achieving it by 2050.
The purpose of this long-term strategy is not to set targets, but to create a vision and sense of direction, plan for it, and inspire as well as enable stakeholders, researchers, entrepreneurs and citizens alike to develop new and innovative industries, businesses and associated jobs. The Commission feels it has a strong mandate from its citizens: according to the latest special Eurobarometer (November 2018) 93% of Europeans believe climate change to be caused by human activity and 85% agree that fighting climate change and using energy more efficiently can create economic growth and jobs in Europe. With the vision a climate neutral Europe by 2050 the EU can inform others how to deliver collectively a clean planet.
The road to a climate neutral economy will require joint action in seven strategic areas: energy efficiency; deployment of renewables; clean, safe and connected mobility; competitive industry and circular economy; infrastructure and interconnections; bio-economy and natural carbon sinks; carbon capture and storage to address remaining emissions. Pursuing all these strategic priorities will contribute to make the vision of a climate neutral Europe by 2050 a reality.

More information
2050 long-term strategy | A Clean Planet for all - A European strategic long-term vision for a prosperous, modern, competitive and climate neutral economy

Source: https://ec.europa.eu

More European funds available to support energy efficiency in residential buildings

EUR 97 million allocated by the European Commission, Increased support for European Local ENergy Assistance (ELENA), EIB assistance and expertise for project development available under ELENA

The European Local ENergy Assistance (ELENA) facility will benefit from € 97 million of new funding from the European Commission for its envelope dedicated to residential buildings. This budget will support project development services for energy-efficiency investments in privately and publicly owned housing. The European Investment Bank (EIB), which implements ELENA, will provide assistance and expertise and act as the point of contact.

The EU Member States agreed in December 2018 to reduce energy consumption by 32,5% by 2030 as compared to business as usual projections. This target, a central provision of the clean energy package, implies huge investments, especially in residential buildings, which account for around 40% of the EU’s total final energy demand. Accelerating energy-efficiency refurbishment of housing is therefore a key European priority and the main focus of the ELENA facility. The new funds dedicated to the ELENA residential envelope are fully in line with the targets of the Smart Finance for Smart Buildings (SFSB) initiative to make investments in energy-efficiency projects in residential buildings more attractive to private investors.
Project development services will mainly be directed towards households and homeowner associations with a view to increasing comfort and reducing energy bills. In addition, assistance may be made available to other organisations – e.g. financial institutions including commercial banks – to help them set up and deploy financial instruments and loan products for energy-efficiency improvements in the residential sector. Public entities may also be supported with the implementation of large-scale energy rehabilitation programmes in this sector.

More information

European Commission on energy efficiency | European Local ENergy Assistance (ELENA) | Smart Finance for Smart Buildings initiative (SFSB)

Source: https://ec.europa.eu

EU Building Stock Observatory

In recent years energy efficiency of the building stock has been recognised as a significant route to contribute towards meeting the European Union’s energy targets, by reducing energy demand and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Furthermore, improvements in energy efficiency across the built stock can provide energy security by lessening the reliance on external suppliers and can increase energy affordability, which has numerous social benefits. The overall driver pushing energy efficiency higher up the priority ladder is to achieve the EU’s energy savings targets of 20% by 2020, rising to 32,5% by 2030; to try and achieve this the EU has implemented a variety of policy instruments. Due to energy efficiency being viewed as an essential mechanism to assist the EU in meeting energy and climate change targets, the need to assess the effectiveness of these policies has arisen. Thus, a database was created to facilitate the continual evaluation of the impact of energy efficiency policies concerning existing buildings across the EU, namely the EU Building Stock Observatory (BSO).

The EU BSO is a European Commission initiative which monitors the energy performance of buildings across Europe’s 28-member states (MS) and the EU as a whole. The EU BSO database holds over 170 energy efficiency indicators for each MS, which cover six broad topics:

• Building stock characteristics, including energy consumption and fuel supply mix;
• Technical systems;
• Certification and how they are implemented;
• Finance available for building renovations;
• Fuel poverty and social aspects;
• Building codes and national definitions.

The topics outlined above were developed to facilitate the assessment of energy efficiency improvements of the built stock and the impact of this on the actual energy consumption of the building sector overall. Through the energy efficiency indicators in the BSO and associated topics, the data presented gives an overarching view of energy consumption patterns within each building typology across the EU. Thus, the chief purpose of the BSO is to provide a clear understanding of the effectiveness of EU policy measures and of market support mechanisms, which will steer an improvement in the depth and rate of building renovations to enhance energy efficiency across the EU.

However, this all-encompassing energy efficiency database has faced one major obstacle during its life-time, specifically the database, as it stands, currently lacks enough robust data to allow conclusions to be drawn. One of the main issues is that a number of indicators within the BSO do not have reliable data that is measured, known, or publicly available (e.g. EPC rating by floor area). A further concern is that approximately 10% of indicators in the database, were filled through various EU funded service contracts (i.e. Inspire, Tabula, Entanze) which have now reached completion and are not likely to be repeated, suggesting that they will likely remain as persistent data gaps unless other sources can be identified.
With regards to the primary data collection tools comes a special plea, if you or someone you know is in a position to support this important initiative and complete the non-residential building stock survey please do so at this link

If you would like to keep up to date with all the news and upcoming events from the EU BSO, please register your interest by an email to EUOBs@rics.org

Source: http://buildup.eu

News from the related projects

Upgrading SISMA SET (Subsidy Evaluation Tool)

Within the framework of the SISMA project, a tool for energy and financial evaluation of energy efficiency measures was developed. The basic idea of the tool comes from the fact that for such measures or projects, the payback period is usually longer and the internal rate of return (IRR) is low.
In projects financed through energy contracting, the minimum rate of return is not precisely defined, but it is an empirical value based on the risk profile and yield for such measures or projects. This means that it is only possible to define the lowest IRR, which is still acceptable for the project to be carried out based on cooperation among energy service providers (ESCOs), financial institutions and other interested parties. If for a particular project the profitability is not high enough, it is necessary to provide a certain amount from public funds (subsidy or a grant) to make it feasible. The SISMA SET, a grant evaluation tool, enables authorities to calculate the exact amount of subsidies needed to make the project viable. This also optimizes the use of public funds to finance such projects. The tool is basically intended for the evaluation of four types of public buildings: schools, gyms, offices and health facilities and has two calculation methods.
In the framework of the ENERJ project, GOLEA agency decided to upgrade the SET tool in such a way that it would allow calculation for the so-called joint actions and will serve mainly energy managers dealing with public buildings as a support tool in the planning of joint actions. Joint actions are projects where one or more public contractors with a larger number of individual projects or individual energy efficiency improvements are combined in one joint investment. In this way, as a rule, a higher investment and a higher potential of savings are achieved, which makes it easier to mobilize or attract private capital (ESCO companies) that are usually not engaged in smaller projects. The SET tool has also been equipped to calculate CO2 savings.
In the upgraded SET tool, the Joint action coordinator may add or withdraw individual measures to the calculation of the joint action and monitor the impact on the financial indicators of the entire investment. In this way the joint action can be optimized so that it is as balanced as possible as to the expectations of the parties involved in the project, i.e. public institutions - investors, private capital (ESCO companies) and public institutions - donor incentives (subsidies).
Get the SISMA SET tool and the training kit!

ENERFUND – A tool to identify building energy retrofit opportunities

The ENERFUND tool aims to scale up investments in deep renovation of buildings across Europe. Funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, it provides key stakeholders such as financing institutions, energy service companies and local authorities, with sound and up-to-date information regarding the energy efficiency of the EU’s building stock.
ENERFUND offers the opportunity to compare deep-renovation opportunities of single buildings using data from energy performance certificates (EPC). It is freely accessible online and, up to date, provides buildings’ information for 13 European countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In total, more than 73 million unique building data coming from 8 million energy performance certificates are now embedded and geocoded into the tool.
The tool’s capabilities have been presented in Brussels during the “New technologies and open data levers to achieve climate and energy goals” conference in January 2019. All the presentations can be downloaded from the ENERFUND’s website. During the Conference, the following main recommendations that emerged from the project were presented and analyzed:

• Energy related databases and registries should be constantly updated by the competent authorities.
• It should become compulsory for all databases/registries/etc. regarding energy information (for example certified installers of insulation, availability of funds for retrofits, geothermal potential, etc.) that emerge either from European funded projects or initiatives to be properly geocoded and openly available by all interested parties/stakeholders.
• There is a need to harmonize all energy related data, in alignment with the INSPIRE directive.
• Due to the fact that individuals at the various competent authorities regarding EPC registries are unaware whether or not they are allowed to share EPC data with other parties, the EU Commission should issue a set of Guidelines on how the Environmental Information, the INSPIRE the PSI and the GDPR Directives affect sharing of energy data for the common good.

In conclusion, the availability of transparent, harmonized and up-to-date open-data is urgently needed in the struggle to achieve the climate policy targets set by the EU.

Next events

Partners consortium

ENERJ is supported by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the Interreg MED Programme.

ENERJ (Joint Actions for Energy Efficiency) supports cities and towns in the implementation of energy efficiency actions in their own buildings as part of their local energy and climate policy.
It fosters the collaboration among local governments for Joint Actions. An ENERJ Platform facilitates designing Joint Actions and hosts a database on Local Energy Action Plans and Energy Efficiency measures.

ENERJ project is runnuing from November 2016 until October 2019 with a total budget of Euro 2.26 million. EU Funds Euro 1.92 million.

Lead partner: ANATOLIKI S.A. - Development Agency of Eastern Thessaloniki' Local Authorities

email: reacm@anatoliki.gr / tel. +30 231 0463930