Last March, the European Parliament approved the Green Buildings Directive , a revision of the 2018 Energy Performance Building Directive .
The article will provide European People readers with an overview of the project, analyzing and studying its general principles.
But first of all, what is an EU Directive?
First of all, it is important to specify that the law of the European Union does not have laws, understood as those of individual states. But what does this mean?
Simply because the nomenclature of its legislative instruments is different, the main legislative acts of the European Union are in fact regulations, directives and decisions.
Directives in particular are acts that bind (generally) all Member States to achieve a certain result. The how, and therefore the way to achieve it, is left to the individual States to decide.
What does the Green House Directive provide and what are its objectives?
Born from a proposal by the Commission at the end of 2021, the Green Houses Directive is mainly aimed at increasing the number of renovations and reducing energy consumption and emissions in the building sector. The main objective of the proposed revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive is to achieve a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption in the sector by 55% compared to 1990 levels by 2030, in order to reach climate neutrality (zero emissions) by 2050.
Where does this focus on construction come from? It is essential to know that generally, energy consumption in buildings represents about 40% of total consumption and emissions of harmful gases about 36%. The proposal also includes restructuring a greater number of energy-inefficient buildings and improving the sharing of information on energy performance.
More specifically, starting in 2028, new buildings should be zero-emission (the deadline drops to 2026 for publicly owned buildings), while existing buildings should still improve their emissions performance. It is important to underline that historic buildings, holiday homes, places of worship and temporary structures such as construction sites and beach resorts are excluded from this provision. As for heating, fossil fuels should be banned by 2035, as well as subsidies for the installation of fuel-fired boilers by 2024.
Where are we at?
Following approval by the European Parliament, the directive has officially entered the final phase of the legislative process: the Trilogue, i.e. the interinstitutional negotiations bringing together representatives of the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union.
As of today, following the third Trilogue held on 12 October 2023, we can say that more flexibility has certainly been added to the “deadlines” that countries should respect to make housing more efficient.
Once the directive comes into force, they will be responsible for drawing up National Plans for improving the energy efficiency of buildings, following a specific guideline: to intervene as a priority on the 15% of buildings with the highest energy consumption, placed in the lowest energy category, i.e. "G" (in Italy, approximately 1.8 million residential buildings out of a total of 12 million, according to Istat data).
In this way, it will be possible to reclassify the energy efficiency of all real estate assets starting from the least efficient properties.
What is the situation of our buildings in Italy?
According to initial estimates by the National Association of Building Contractors (ANCE), 9 million out of 12 buildings would not be able to reach the energy performance required by Case Green. And not only that, according to the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Enea), 11 million of them belong to energy classes lower than D.
Finally, 2 million buildings will have to be renovated by 2033 because they do not comply with the rules. It is certainly worth considering that about 75% of buildings were built in Italy before 1991, the year in which an important law regulating energy consumption in buildings was introduced.
While waiting for new updates on the interinstitutional meetings for the application of the Case Green directive, the AC European People is committed to keeping its student-readers informed, in order to stimulate their curiosity and make them more aware future leaders.
