“Buildings represent the greatest potential sector for energy savings in the European Union”, Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, told the participants of the Renovate Europe Day in a video address. He also stressed that “deep renovation of existing buildings has the potential to stimulate innovation, to improve health and to create about two million new direct jobs in the Union by 2020”. Finally, van Rompuy stressed that “energy efficiency in buildings is not a cost but an investment with a great rate of return”.
Oliver Loebel, Managing Director of PU Europe commented, “we laud the Council President’s clear words. They echo exactly what the Renovate Europe campaign is standing for. However, in spite of overwhelming evidence, the Commission is unlikely to build its future climate and energy policy on energy efficiency. The savings potential of Europe’s existing building stock will therefore not be part of the overall European framework until 2030. However, without reducing the energy demand of Europe’s buildings by 80 % by 2050, we will not meet our long-term climate targets. Here is the cat chasing its own tail.”

About the Renovate Europe campaign:
Launched in 2011 in response to a gap in EU priorities for energy efficiency, the campaign’s headline ambition is to reduce the energy demand of the EU building stock by 80 % by 2050 as compared to 2005 levels. To reach this ambition, it will be necessary for Member States to rigorously implement EU legislation and develop financial frameworks to ramp up the EU’s renovation rate from the current 1 % to 3 % per year by 2020 and ensure that all renovations are deep or staged deep renovations.

More details at www.renovate-europe.eu.

For more details, please contact
PU Europe
Email: secretariat@pu-europe.eu Website: www.pu-europe.eu
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