“Energy poverty is when people do not have the financial ability to maintain a constant, comfortable temperature in their homes” says Yevhen Malnev, from OHU.

In 2019, the number of Ukrainian citizens not being able to maintain comfortable temperatures reached 30%.

By March 2023, in just 3 months, the basements of ten houses were modernised: insulation of pipelines, replacement of lamps with energy-saving ones, installation of individual heat substations with weather regulation, provision of emergency lighting for ten hours and air conditioning – benefiting over 2200 residents.

“Many elderly people are now left on their own in their apartments, and the nearest bomb shelters are usually inaccessible for most of them.” says Yevhen Malnev from Odessa Housing Union. 

“But when a safe shelter was installed in the basements of their homes, it changed people’s mood, gave them a sense of security and faith that they can survive this war too.” 
 

1. Defines an approach to measure the “heat pump readiness” of buildings, tested on 30 target buildings across the EU.
2. Assesses how a break in heating supply may affect indoor temperature and comfort period in target buildings.
3. Proposes the heat pump readiness indicator (HPRI) and ways to include it in national EPCs, including a list of policy recommendations.
4. Assumes an air-water heat-pump as the reference heat pump, with a space heating capacity of 15 W per m2 of the building floor area (defined for an outside temperature of 0°C) and supplying hot water at a temperature of 45°C.

• Renocally, a new project funded by the European Climate Initiative (EUKI) has just launched. The two-year project will build capacity for municipalities and policymakers in Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia to decarbonize the countries’ building stock in a cost-efficient, people-centric way, taking into account legislative changes at EU level. Learn more. 
• Demo-BLog, a new EU-funded project under the Horizon 2020 framework, kicked off last month in Delft, Netherlands. The 4-year project aims to unlock the potential of Digital Building Logbooks (DBLs) to accelerate decarbonization of the European building stock through further developing and demonstrating the tool and fostering its market deployment. Learn more.
• INDICATE brings together governments, industry and academia to tackle one of the most common barriers to enacting policies which will ensure climate neutral construction: a lack of reliable and comprehensive emissions data for buildings. Learn more.

The report highlights that immediate action must be taken to ensure that embodied carbon in buildings does not undermine the carbon reductions achieved from energy efficiency. Materials used in the construction of buildings (i.e. concrete, steel, aluminium, glass and bricks) are estimated to represent around 9% of overall energy-related CO2 emissions, and globally, approximately 100 billion tonnes of waste is caused by construction, renovation and demolition, with about 35% sent to landfills. Raw material use is also predicted to double by 2060 – with steel, concrete and cement already major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and in fast-growing developing economies, construction materials are set to dominate resource consumption, with associated GHG emissions expected to double by 2060.

A whole-life cycle approach to construction is essential to maximise sustainability. In the EU with new building standards of zero energy buildings entering into force from 2025, accounting for embodied carbon will become increasingly important in the coming years.

To catch up, the annual rate of improvement as of 2019 until 2030 must now be at 5 points per year. This is strong evidence for the urgent need for additional action that should be reflected in a transformational outcome of legislative discussions on the EPBD. In the run up to Council negotiations on the EPBD, Member States should prioritise the foundational role buildings play against the backdrop of climate change and the energy crisis and this should be reflected in the most ambitious possible EPBD revision. 

Considering the strong catch-up needed in terms of decarbonisation of the building stock, there is no time to lose and no possibility to take it slow or be shy in the actions taken. This is the only way to keep the promises of the Paris Agreement alive. 

In the past two years, our ambition and commitment to advance change led to achieving major advances in analysing and promoting buildings and energy demand policies, in new research on building sector policies and business models.

Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, and soaring energy prices in Europe, have led to a fundamental rethinking in the area in which we focus our work. These developments, in combination with the ever-starker warnings of the climate science community allow only one conclusion: We need to accelerate positive change and be bold, in both our thinking and our actions.

What underpins our strategic decisions and daily work is the will and desire to ask the hard questions: How can Europe become the climate champion it committed itself to be? And how can the built environment support and encourage a truly sustainable – and affordable – lifestyle for all?

With this biennial report, we are sharing our story and achievements of the years 2020-2021 and intend to provide a window into who we are as an organisation, how we are delivering positive impact and how we are moving towards bigger thinking and bolder action so we can achieve truly climate-neutral buildings.
 

• Endorse Member States to identify appropriate neighbourhoods to implement integrated renovation programmes.
• Establish a harmonised definition of positive energy neighbourhoods (PENs), which should clarify the boundaries of the built environment, covering aspects related to use of renewables, energy communities, mobility, density and social cohesion.
• Reinforce existing policies with PEN solutions, including forthcoming national building renovation strategies.
• Redesign energy efficiency solutions as a dynamic concept.

The new report published by the H2020 project X-tendo describes how the project applied four cross-cutting criteria to develop its 10 innovative features. The four criteria are: quality and reliability, user friendliness, economic feasibility and consistency with internal standards. This criteria was assessed and evaluated for all 10 features during the phases of development and testing.