Europe’s building stock needs large-scale energy efficiency renovation, experts suggest

The European building stock constitutes the largest single energy consumer in the EU, with about 35% of buildings in the EU being over 50 years old and not energy efficient. And in order to make the buildings more energy efficient and cut energy consumption and CO2 emissions, mobilising private financing is a key initiative.

Global, institutional and investor interest in energy efficiency finance has increased in magnitude in recent years. Both the Paris Agreement adopted at the UN Climate Change Conference in December and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals agreed in 2015 to include targets to improve energy efficiency as part of a wider global climate and energy agenda. Both frameworks also underline the importance of attracting private financing and the creation of new business models to support these goals.

This is why the European Mortgage Federation and the European Covered Bond Council, in cooperation with important stakeholders, have launched a European initiative to develop an energy efficient mortgage. The idea is to mobilise banks’ mortgage financing to incentivise citizens to move their property out of the “brown zone” – energy rating G-D – and into the “green zone” – energy rating A-C.

Based on a set of energy efficiency indicators, lenders would offer a discount in the interest rate after a certain period of time according to the improvement in the energy rating of the property, or additional funds at the time of origination of the mortgage. Energy efficiency improvements would free up borrowers’ disposable income due to reduced energy bills as well as help them maintain the value of their property.

HeatingSave – making even older homes more energy efficient

The HeatingSave Building Energy Management System helps customers save more than 30% on their bills by optimizing any heating system’s overall functionality. This is done by taking into account a variety of factors, such as internal and external temperatures, occupancy, time of the year, the particular characteristics of installed boilers, etc. All of the data is used in order to determine the best heating patterns for the various heating zones within any building, using our proprietary heat-loss algorithm.

The end result is that users still get a very good level of comfort, while in the same time saving energy and money in the process.

If you’d like to find out more details on all the features HeatingSave has in store, just contact our dedicated product team, they’ll be more than happy to provide you with all the necessary information.