A deep renovation of the EU building stock could provide an answer to Europe’s economic woes by triggering the creation of up to 2 million jobs! This is one of the numerous considerations - along with cost savings and energy security - that has led to the recent involvement of local authorities in the Renovate Europe Campaign (REC).

Indeed, Energy Cities, the European association of local authorities engaged in the energy transition, is now representing the voice of cities in this ever-growing Europe-wide movement.

This new partnership is expected to further support REC’s ambition to reduce the energy demand of the EU existing building stock by 80% by 2050, saving taxpayers’ money in the process and making homes more comfortable using available, proven technology. Cities play a key role in this field for their ability to develop integrated, target-based refurbishment plans and act as role models towards citizens by retrofitting their own building stock. An illustration of this is provided by the Display Campaign– which encourages municipalities to use posters to publicly “display” the energy efficiency of their buildings and is now used by over 500 local authorities across Europe.

With Energy Cities on board, the Renovate Europe Campaign has now grown to 24 partners and is actively seeking to extend its partnership to all stakeholders in the construction value chain. Commenting on this new alliance Adrian Joyce, Renovate Europe Campaign Director says “Energy Cities is a key partner to promote Renovate Europe’s messages to the local authorities. Even if the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive are huge successes, these need to be implemented in an ambitious way if we want to reach the goal of 80% reduction of energy demand of the EU building stock.” Energy Cities joins Renovate Europe as “a natural next step in our objective to accelerate the grassroots energy transition process, which ought to be supported by a large alliance of stakeholders” says Gérard Magnin, Executive Director of Energy Cities.

Learn more about the campaign: www.renovate-europe.eu
Learn more about Energy Cities: http://www.energy-cities.eu/

Press Contact
Madeleine LAFFONT
T: +32 2 639 10 10
@: madeleine.laffont@renovate-europe.eu