The following tool has been developed in the frame of the EmBuild project which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme.
This guidance and template aim to be a useful tool to support public authorities in developing renovation strategies, with a particular focus on the renovation of public buildings. Such strategies should encourage renovation of all buildings but as a minimum renovation of the buildings owned by public authorities, which have a key role to play in stimulating the market energy efficiency improvements in the entire building stock.
For small and medium-sized municipalities, the renovation of a public building could be considered “lighthouse projects”, which can demonstrate the potential of building renovation and stimulate the market, to achieve greenhouse gas reductions. Renovation of public buildings could be financed partly by EU funds, alleviating the financial burden from the municipalities. With regard to the residential building stock, a longer-term approach to driving investment decisions is key.
The EmBuild project will provide support to municipalities to follow this guidance and develop renovation strategies for public buildings with input from its tasks and deliverables – links to relevant input is included under each section. The Annex provides an outline of what should be in included in a renovation strategy for public buildings and where the EmBuild project will provide support. This guidance is compatible with existing templates and guidance for Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs) and Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) - developed in the context of the Covenant of Mayors, and National Energy Efficiency Action Plans (NEEAPs) - developed in relation to the implementation of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive. Therefore, where municipalities have already developed such plans, duplication is not necessary, and where they are not in place those of other municipalities could be used as a further reference.
Renovation strategies should cover the following elements:
- An overview of the building stock-based, as appropriate, on statistical sampling
- Identification of cost-effective approaches to renovations relevant to the building type and climatic zone
- Policies and measures to stimulate cost-effective deep renovations of buildings, including staged deep renovations
- A forward-looking perspective to guide investment decisions of individuals, the construction industry and financial institutions; and
- An evidence-based estimate of expected energy savings and wider benefits.
This is in line with what is required for national renovation strategies. Therefore, this guidance is structured according to each of these elements. The focus is on the renovation of public buildings but this guidance can also be relevant to strategies targeting renovation of commercial residential buildings.
The approach to developing national renovation strategies developed by BPIE sets out the method for establishing the strategy itself.
