ABSTRACT
The impact of buildings on Europe’s total energy consumption has been assessed at 40% in 2012, making the building sector responsible for 36% of CO2 emissions. The reduction of energy consumption in buildings is the focus of the European 2020 strategy to ensure that climate and energy targets are reached by the end of this decade. Essential policy instruments that encourage energy efficiency, retrofit measures, and renewable production are the following: The Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), the Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD and EPBD recast), and the Renewable Energy Directive (RED).
One of the major initiatives promoted by the EPBD recast is the implementation of nearly zeroenergy buildings (NZEBs) as the building objective from 2018 onward. NZEBs represent a great opportunity to obtain a significant energy saving potential in Europe. The Directive also requires the assessment of cost-optimal levels related to minimum energy performance requirements in buildings.
After an overview on European energy consumption and policies for energy efficiency, this chapter focuses on NZEBs and cost-optimality to assess the progress of implementation in Member States. It analyzes the main debates surrounding NZEBs as well as the barriers and challenges in relation to both retrofit and new buildings. The report also discusses policies and measures to overcome barriers identifying best practices in Member States.
The chapter illustrates how new, efficient technological measures evolve to address a new building concept in the light of EU requirements. It stresses how the integration between cost optimality and high performance technical solutions underpins the deployment of NZEBs. However, the analysis shows that reaching buildings requiring nearly zero energy at the lowest cost is not yet reached through Europe, especially at a retrofit level.
In conclusion, the chapter demonstrates how the attention given to energy efficiency in buildings increased over the last years, but the achievement of widespread saving targets remains one of the main challenges that Europe has to face. Member States are required to further adopt specific actions to exploit the potential energy savings deriving from the building sector.
