Energy Efficiency Directive – what are the discussions and how it will affect the building industry

July 26, 2011 at 8:02 pm | Posted in Legislative Outreach | Leave a comment
Tags: energy_efficiency, European_Commission, green renovation, Lobby

The European Commission published at the end of June its final version of the debated Energy Efficiency Directive. The text will be discussed and negotiated further in the European Parliament and Council of Ministers starting with this fall.

The Directive was supposed to capture some of the provisions from the Energy Efficiency Plan  and also review  the general energy efficiency targets for 2020.  For the building industry the Directive is relevant because:

• sets obligation on Member States to renovate 3% of their building stock to minimum energy performance criteria
• demands public bodies to include energy efficiency criteria in public procurement of products, services and building
• sets obligations on energy distributors or retail energy sales companies to achieve annual energy savings – preferably through energy efficiency measures applied to final customers
• require installation of meters and smart meters to final customers for electricity, natural gas, district heating or cooling, district supplied domestic hot water
• promotes facilitation/support of small scale and micro cogeneration units
• promotes energy services market – model contracts for energy performance contracting (buildings included)  in the public sector

However, the European Commission’s proposal  received a lot of critics mainly for already including a lot of “opt-outs” in major areas such as the 3% renovation target and the energy savings from the utilities.

The situation might improve since the  Rapporteur assigned to draft the European Parliament’s position and lead the negotiation is Mr. Claude Turmes (Greens, MEP Luxembourg) that already criticised significantly the Commission’s proposal, showing a clear support for stronger requirements. 

More to follow after the fall’s discussions….

Anca Bieru