Asked if the EU’s overall climate goals were threatened by poor legislative development, De Groote said, “Definitely. And it is not being addressed sufficiently. To decarbonise European heat demand you need to do three things. First you need to decrease demand by 30% to 50%. Then you have to make your supply side sustainable and efficient. On the supply side they are two levels of playing field. One is individual and the other is collective. On the individual level, if you want to decarbonise you have to switch to heat pumps.”
“If your building has to go towards 80% minimum levels of CO2, the answer is clear. If you know that 75-90% of the current building stock will still be standing, then there is not enough being done to meet the Paris Agreement goals.”
De Groote was particularly damning, when asked if the recent European Commission winter package had helped to initiate policy on the subject in the right direction. “If you want me to be honest there is hardly anything in there in Commission’s proposal for the revised Energy Performance in Buildings Directive (EPBD). On purely the buildings directive there is hardly anything, except for new buildings, which was in the previous directive already. There is nothing in there in the huge challenge of the current building stock, of which 75 to 90%, will still be there in 2050, on the level of renovation, there is nothing concrete in there. That’s a huge failure.”
De Groote asserted that a roadmap needs to be introduced that takes opportunity of existing systems breaking down in buildings being replaced with new decarbonised heating systems.
Lamenting the lack of hard legislation, he added, “For buildings that is absolutely missing. I hear voices from those operating on energy and district heating that there is more regulation in there but on the level of individual buildings or multi family buildings there is really no hard legislation.”
De Groote recommended directive implementation be followed up, more done to increase the rate of renovations in terms of guidelines and obligations and finally integrating buildings and energy systems. “Moving buildings away from being individual units, so they can provide energy into the system and control heating and cooling. The golden key is district heating but perhaps that is asking too much,” he said.
Source: Decentralised Energy