“Dublin City is committed to renovating its older buildings to improve energy performance. This will also contribute to sustainability, economic growth and employment. The Council is pleased to be working with seven other cities across Europe to strengthen implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive.” – Owen Keegan, Chief Executive, Dublin City Council
Buildings are one of the biggest contributors to climate change in Europe and account for over 40% of the EU’s final energy demand and 36% of CO2 emissions. To meet EU’s energy efficiency targets for 2020 and 2030 and long-term goal under the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) to decarbonise our building stock by 2050, renovation rate needs to increase to at least 2-3% per annum.
To accelerate the rate of energy renovation, the 2018 recast of the EPBD obliges EU Member States to set out a roadmap to decarbonise their building stock by 2050 -National Renovation Strategies, supported by a suite of measurable progress indicators and milestones.
To support energy renovation and avoid a piecemeal approach between various levels of governments (Recommendation 1.2), the IGBC is now working with local, national and European stakeholders to develop a multi-level framework that contains a suite of milestones and measurable progress indicators for building renovation strategies, integrating data and insights from the local authority level. The Framework will serve as a tool for Local Authorities in delivering the EPBD and ensure that local initiatives are aligned with national and European policies. A methodology will be developed so that the Framework reporting system can be integrated into Sustainable Energy Actions Plans (SECAPs), prepared by Covenant of Mayors’ signatories.
In Ireland, the Irish Green Building Council is working in close cooperation with Dublin City Council, and 4 fellow local authorities (“followers”): Cork City Council, Kilkenny County Council, Laois County Council and Offaly County Council. In Europe, IGBC and Dublin City Council will work closely with 7 other green building councils and cities, alongside the Building Performance Institute of Europe and Climate Alliance, part of the Covenant of Mayors’ office team.
The Framework will develop a suite of milestones and measurable progress indicators for building renovation strategies by working with cities and other relevant stakeholders to integrate data and insight from the city level. These indicators and milestones will be developed through inclusive consultation with relevant stakeholders
and across multiple levels of government.
The progress indicators will reflect targeted outcomes across multiple benefits areas for the renovation strategies at local, national and EU level (e.g. on emissions reductions, increased jobs and decreased public health costs). This will help to align different levels of governance as countries implement their renovation strategies.
By capturing economic, social and environmental data at local level, such as number of upskilled workers, improved indoor air quality etc, the Framework will link renovation projects and initiatives at the local level to policy processes and decision making at national level. By being able to quantify the impacts across these categories, cities will be able to more forcefully make the political case for scaling-investment in the renovation programmes that deliver outcomes that are most important to their communities.
The Framework will ensure there is more feedback between city renovation projects and those organisations who are leading initiatives to support the renovation market (i.e. awareness raising, skills, finance etc.). This will create important feedback loops so when gaps/barriers are spotted at the coalface in cities, initiatives are being generated or scaled to plug these. This will enable national policymakers to be able to more strategically identify initiatives that are making real progress on plugging such gaps/barriers (based on real impact data) and in turn scale their funding/impact so cities can be properly supported.
Download “Building renovation in the Clean Energy Package: implications at local, national and EU levels” and “How to include building renovation in your Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan” reports.
For further information on this initiative, please contact Marion.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 840926
