A joint workshop with ALDREN project, CEN-CE project and EPB Center will be held on 28 February at the European Energy Efficiency Conference in Wels (AT). Below is a preview of the content that will take place in this workshop entitled “EU projects supporting EPBD implementation”Author: Johann Zirngibl, CSTB, France

 

The Union is committed to developing a sustainable, competitive, secure and decarbonised energy system by 2050. Member States should seek a cost-efficient equilibrium between decarbonising energy supplies and reducing final energy consumption.

To reach these targets, new challenges and requirements are stated in the revised EPBD (amended 30 May 2018) which Member States shall bring into force by 10 March 2020.

The revision of the EPBD and the transposition by the Member States offers the possibility for common and appropriate implementation, considering the technical progress, and the new challenges and requirements.

To support and help Member States and building professionals in common and appropriate implementation, the Commission initiated the following actions:  

  • European standards were developed under the Commission Mandate M/480 to the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) for the assessment of the energy performance of buildings
  • European projects were started as support actions for common implementation and to promote skills development and education in the construction and energy efficiency sectors.

In this workshop EU projects supporting EPBD implementationthree European projects will be presented, providing policy support to the revised EPBD. The three projects are complementary but have common points because all the three projects are based on European standards.

For each project, the presentation will show how the project is related to the challenges and new requirements of the revised EPBD:

  • The project “Support the dissemination and roll-out of the set of energy performance of building standards developed under EC Mandate M/480 – the EPB Center consultancy service)” will assist Member States to describe their national calculation methodology following the national annexes of the overarching standards, namely ISO 52000-1, 52003-1, 52010-1, 52016-1, and 52018-1, (Annex 1 / point 1)
  • The project “ALliance for Deep RENovation in buildings (ALDREN) – Implementing the European Common Voluntary Certification Scheme, as back-bone along the whole deep renovation process” will present:
  • the application of the European Voluntary Certificate (Article 11, Annex 1),
  • the ALDREN Building Renovation Passport and renovation strategies (Article 19a – commission duty).
  • The project “CEN standard Certified Experts – (CEN-CE) EU-wide qualification and training scheme based on EPBD mandated CEN standards” promote skills development and education in the construction and energy efficiency sectors focusing on Heating, Domestic hot water, economical calculation and renewables. An example will be shown related to the measured energies in standards.

The three projects are contributing to the transformation of existing buildings into nearly zero-energy buildings (in particular by an increase in deep renovations), which is among the key points of the revised EPBD and the European policy in the building energy sector in general. From this new challenge several actions are derived and considered by the three EU projects:

  • High quality building needs high quality assessment tools. The calculation of “NZEB” buildings must be much more detailed, because due to the improved insulation of the building envelope, other parameters (as for example distribution losses, auxiliary consumption, the recovery of heat gains and solar gains) become much more important. It is questionable if simplified, monthly method will be able to reach this target. To achieve a highly energy efficient and decarbonised building stock is has to make sure that appropriate implementation takes place. Therefore, the general framework for the calculation of the energy performance of buildings should be updated with the support of the CEN standards, elaborated under Commission Mandate M/480. Other calculation methods could be chosen, but the CEN standards should be the reference of appropriate calculation related to the NZEB target.
  • Ensure that EPC’s (energy performance certificates) are of good quality will also be central in awareness raising, information, reporting and confidence (reliability) of energy efficiency actions. The transparency of EPC’S should be improved by ensuring that all necessary parameters for calculations are set out and applied consistently. Member States should adopt adequate measures to ensure, for example, that the performance of installed, replaced or upgraded technical building systems, such as for space heating, air-conditioning or water heating, is documented in view of building certification and compliance checking. Comparing calculated results to actual results is also a way to provide confidence in renovation works.
  • High-quality data on the building stock is needed for compliance checking, for producing statistics on the regional or national buildings stock. Harmonised building passports could efficiently contribute to generate these data bases. As complementary tools to the EPC’s, building passports could also identify trigger points, opportune moments in the life cycle of a building, for carrying out energy efficiency renovations and define coherent step by step renovation strategies towards NZEB’s by avoiding lock-in effects.
  • Linking funding to the quality of energy efficiency. To ensure that financial measures related to energy efficiency are applied in the best way in building renovation, they should be linked to the quality of the renovation works considering the targeted or achieved energy savings. These savings should be documented in EPC’s. Those measures should therefore be linked to the performance of the equipment or material used for the renovation, but also to the level of certification or qualification of the installer. High quality assessment tools need high quality professional skills.

 

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

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