Annual renovations need to jump by an order of magnitude; at the moment it’s crawling at 1% per year. Worse, standard renovations save very little energy, just 9% in homes and 16% in commercial buildings. It’s the deep renovations that cut energy by 60% or more, but that’s only happening to under 0.3% of the stock. Louise Sunderland at RAP explains how and why the EC intends to launch minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) later this year. The MEPS framework will include financial and practical support for owners and occupiers to ensure the standards are both effective and fair, says the author. Furthermore, renovations are an ideal way to spur economic recovery and jobs at a local level, by necessity reaching all communities in every nation. Sunderland gives successful case studies from the Netherlands which has its own national MEPS, and looks at central and eastern Europe which offers the highest cost-benefit renovation potential. To meet the new European climate target of a 55% emissions reduction by 2030 our buildings must go further faster, reducing emissions by 60%.
Deep renovations that attain energy savings of 60% or more occur in a tiny 0.2%-0.3% of the stock. Without increasing the rate of deep renovation, we need to raise the general renovation rate by 10 to 15 times to decarbonise the stock. These European statistics mask national variations. Countries in central and eastern Europe have achieved some of the highest renovation rates, particularly for homes. Even so, these higher rates result largely from lighter renovations – deep renovations of homes happen at half of the European average rate. The challenge for these countries is to push not only for more, but for more ambitious renovations. Responding to this challenge of massively increasing both the rate and depth of renovation, the European Commission announced it will introduce mandatory minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) into the Buildings Directive this year as part of its renovation wave strategy.