Energy efficiency in Buildings

28May
2001

The speakers were :
• Anders Wijkman, Member of European Parliament, member of the ITRE Committee and Vice President of the European Energy Foundation; 
• Günther Hanreich, Director, European Commission DG TREN, New Sources of Energy and Demand Management Directorate; 
• Axel Wenblad, Senior Vice-President, Environmental Affairs, Skanska AB; 
• Horst Biedermann, EuroAce, the European Alliance of companies for Energy Efficiency in Buildings.

According to Anders Wijkman we have to focus not only on the security of supply but also on controlling demand as long as we take as a starting point the Kyoto protocol, through energy efficiency measures and investments are less visible.

From his own experience, having worked as the rapporteur in the European Parliament for the energy efficiency action plan the Commission submitted about a year ago, Anders Wijkman finds that people tend to have very limited information of what is available – this applies to both businesses and individual households.

Günther Hanreich, Director DG TREN, stated that energy performance in buildings is very important as buildings are responsible for over 40 % of all EU final energy consumption and for more than 25% of our CO² emissions. A saving potential of 20% to 40 % of the present energy consumption of the building sector has been estimated. In most cases energy savings can easily repay the investments required to realise this potential within the lifetime of the investment.

Axel Wemblad recognised that the Commission proposal is a good starting point even if a lot still has to be done in the fields

For Skanska, it is very important that the proposal addresses already existing buildings, because of the long turnover time of buildings. Many of the actions that can be taken are cost-effective, and can create employment within the EU.

Horst Biedermann started by saying that the potential of buildings to cut CO² emissions was purely lacking in the initial plans of DG Environment when they developed plans for Kyoto in 1997.

In a constructive spirit, he gave a critical comment on the effort by the Commission to deal with energy consumption in buildings, stressing that the Directive was a very positive response to the call from the Parliament for more action relating to saving energy in buildings.