In Brussels last week, the BUILD UPON Leaders Summit brought countries and actors from across Europe together to present future plans for the renovation of the region’s buildings – ending a year-long campaign of over 100 events led by European Green Building Councils.
With heated negotiations on the EU’s main energy efficiency laws underway, and a deadline of 30 April 2017 approaching for countries to deliver national renovation strategy plans to Brussels, those preparing the strategies for Ireland, Croatia, Luxembourg and Finland presented how they are tackling this challenge.
One of the striking features of the presentations was how these governments were starting to coordinate openly with industry and other actors to find innovative and practical solutions to driving large-scale building renovation. Whilst it is widely accepted that cross-sector leadership on the building renovation agenda will be needed if Europe is to fulfil the targets set out in the Paris Agreement, many larger countries are still criticised for failing to coordinate and build consensus across sectors on this key issue for climate policy.
With Ireland one of the clear leaders on this debate, Ken Cleary from Ireland’s Department of Communications, Climate Action & Environment opened the speeches – noting that the BUILD UPON project had “allowed policy makers to devote more attention to solutions to issues rather than identifying them”. The process in Ireland and other countries demonstrated that stakeholders want to get involved in a constructive manner with complex energy issues, and that innovative consultation processes led by Green Building Councils can be complimentary to traditional government-led policy consultations.
The EU Horizon 2020 funded BUILD UPON project, led by Green Building Council España and 13 Green Building Councils across the Europe Regional Network of WorldGBC, will shortly publish its final recommendations for renovation strategies across the region – adding an important national perspective to the current EU debate over the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive.
Download the renovation strategy presentations from:
