Europe's Buildings under the Microscope
A country by country review of the energy performance of buildings
It is a major obstacle to strong policy-making at the EU level that there is a lack of data on the building sector for Europe as a whole.
There has been significant Europe-wide legislation on buildings and there are several forthcoming initiatives underway to improve the energy performance of new or existing buildings. However, much of this is done with a minimum of fact-based knowledge and analysis.
To create a sound basis for political debate and policy making at EU and MS level, BPIE has embarked on a major undertaking: to get a vital picture of the European building stock. This report is a first attempt at such a comprehensive approach.Structure of the report
Part 1 surveys 27 Member States, together with Norway and Switzerland, examining floor space area for residential and commercial buildings, building typologies and characteristics. The information is drawn from the statistical offices of national administrations and will be presented in a form that allows for European comparisons and analysis (cf. separate document for data).
Part 2 provides detailed information and analysis of European building codes and major programmes that are designed to improve the energy performance in buildings.
In Part 3 the available data was used to develop and assess the energy performance scenarios for the buildings sector in Europe with the aim to illustrate potential energy saving and CO2 reduction pathways, reflecting the EU’s 20% energy saving target for 2020, as well as the EU’s long term 80-95% GHG emission reduction target for 2050.
The scenarios are built on different renovation rates and depths and illustrate the impact of different ambition levels on the European environment and economy.
The main objectives of this study are to give policymakers the facts and offer the arguments to make the case persuasively, and to provide useful data input to researchers who should ground any political discussion with science based insights.
The launch event took place in the context of the Renovate Europe Day.
BPIE is currently developing a web application for sharing the collected data at EU and Member State level. This online knowledge sharing module will be accessible through our website. We hope that this tool will match the needs of the energy efficiency community and help to address the frequent data requests, which we keep receiving since the launch of our report. We will launch the application by summer 2012.
