Research, innovation and education will play an important role in making buildings, one of the EU’s most energy-intensive domains, more sustainable.
On 14 October 2020, the European Commission (EC) adopted a Communication that outlines the EC’s strategy for a renovation wave of its building stock, in order to meet the European Green Deal goal of climate neutrality by 2050. As buildings are overall responsible for 40% of the total energy consumed in the EU, the strategy is of a major significance to achieve the European Green Deal’s climate objective. The EU is facing a challenging situation as its building stock is old and therefore lacks energy efficiency. The EC estimates that more than 220 million building units, or 85% of the entire EU building stock, is older than 20 years. Moreover, today’s annual renovation rate is low, varying from 0.4% to 1.2% in the 27 EU Member States. The renovation rate will need at least to double to reach the EU’s energy efficiency and climate objectives.
This raises questions of how to keep a faster pace of renovations still affordable for owners and renters. The EC argues in its new Communication that this intertwined twin challenge of achieving energy efficiency and affordability can be met and even turned into an opportunity, if approached the right way: While increasing renovation rates is costly, it lowers energy bills, boosts the construction sector and supports SMEs and local employment.
EC President von der Leyen announced already in her State of the Union speech on 16 September 2020 that the Next Generation EU recovery instrument will help to kick start the renovation wave. In the Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy 2021, the EC proposed on 17 September 2020 that Member States include the European Flagships “Renovate” and “Power Up”, outlined in the 2021 growth strategy, in their Recovery and Resilience Plans to improve the energy and resource efficiency of buildings. The EC will support the implementation of these Flagships by providing guidance to Member States on the preparation of the Recovery and Resiliency Plans and on the individual assessment of National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) and Long-term Renovation Strategies. The EC will also analyse the possibility of including building emissions into European emissions trading to ensure that the relative prices of different energy sources provide the right signals to the market.
The renovation wave strategy is comprehensive, looking at recycling of construction materials, improving productivity in the sector to allow for affordable renovation and construction of sustainable buildings and creating new and more sustainable building materials. To reach these goals, research and innovation (R&I) as well as education and especially new skills are highly relevant.
As investment into digital and innovative technologies by the construction sector is currently low, the renovation wave strategy foresees to spur digitalisation in the construction sector through Horizon Europe, Digital Innovation Hubs and Testing and Experimentation Facilities under the Digital Europe Programme. The EC hopes that this will increase the productivity and the efficiency in the use of materials. Moving towards smart buildings and digitally enabled construction would allow to generate large pools of data for the entire life-cycle of buildings, including construction, use and renovation, and thus provide the basis for more efficiency. The Communication mentions that the EC will consider creating a governance framework for data spaces and developing allocated data spaces, e.g. for energy, manufacturing and construction. Digital industrial platforms will allow stakeholders to collect and make better use of this data.
Already the current European Green Deal Call under Horizon 2020 includes an area dedicated to ‘Energy and resource-efficient buildings’. This effort will continue in the upcoming Horizon Europe programme, which foresees R&I investments in energy technologies, sustainability and circularity of materials and systems for construction. The Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities under Horizon Europe foresees to reach 100 climate neutral and smart cities by 2030, making them role models for other European cities. As part of the next R&I framework programme, the EC considers a Public-Private Partnership on People-centric Sustainable Built Environment (Built4People), which in turn could deliver innovation to the buildings and construction industry – as well as to the new Mission. Furthermore, the foreseen Clean Energy Transition Co-funded Partnership could contribute to developing climate-neutral solutions for heating and cooling of buildings. The EC views also the Seal of Excellence under Horizon Europe as a potential tool to unlock additional resources from regional programmes for building renovation R&I. Finally, the Clean Energy Transition sub-programme under the LIFE programme will support the renovation wave by addressing behavioural and non-technological barriers to renovation.
The Communication also addresses the new skills required for sustainable construction and renovation. The 2020 European Skills Agenda foresees the launch of a Pact for Skills to bring together private and public stakeholders with the objective of up- and reskilling Europe’s workforce (see SwissCore article). The Build Up Skills initiative that continues under the LIFE programme, allows Member States to update their gap analysis and National Roadmaps for training. The EC’s strategy also strives to influence the development of European architecture by launching the “New European Bauhaus”, already mentioned by President von der Leyen during her State of the Union speech, which foresees to nurture a new European aesthetic combining performance with inventiveness: “The New European Bauhaus will act as an incubator for innovation and creativity to drive sustainable design across Europe and beyond that is also appealing and affordable for citizens.”