The building stock in Europe consists of 40% of buildings built before 1960 and 75% of them are energy inefficient according to today's standards. Two-thirds of residential buildings are still heated by fossil fuels (mainly natural gas 44%, oil and heating oils 16% and coal 5%). Overall, buildings account for around 40% of the EU's total energy consumption and 36% of its greenhouse gas emissions. The road to improvement began, among other things, by setting ten steps to reduce dependence on natural gas.
Round tables are organized in the Czech Republic and Slovakia as part of the international project GreenDeal4Buildings. The main objectives are to disseminate best practices, propose improvement measures and develop roadmaps and action plans. The three expert groups focused on finance, building energy and construction preparing the documents for the round tables. Not only residential and commercial buildings are included, but also industrial buildings and urban infrastructure. A joint meeting of all three expert groups took place on 25 April and the topics discussed included increasing the effectiveness of financial instruments, EPC without affecting government debt and the impact of ESG on energy saving business.
The introductory round table took place on 15 February with the participation of top experts. The second round table is planned for May 19 in Prague and the third round table will take place in September 2022. The same activities take place in parallel in Slovakia. The GreenDeal4Buildings project, whose Czech partners are SEVEn, The Energy Efficiency Center, the Association of Energy Service Providers (APES), the Association for Infrastructure Development (ARI) and the Association of Construction Entrepreneurs (SPS), was presented at the Sustainable Energy and Transport Committee on 22 April 2022, together with other international projects streamSAVE, Triple-A, CONGREGATE and PED-ID, which focus on various areas of energy efficiency.
