There are no more doubts that our planet is in the state of climate emergency. With buildings being one of the biggest contributors to the climate change in Europe, it is our responsibility to come up with realizable ideas and to transfer them into functioning projects that will help meeting EU's energy efficiency targets and long-term goal under the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) to fully decarbonize it's buildings stock by 2050.
Renovation became crucial and its rate needs to increase to at least 2-3% of renovated building stock per year.
It is the European cities themselves who can significantly contribute to this renovation process. That is the main motivation for BUILD UPON2 project, funded by EU Horizon 2020 and led by World Green Building Council, to empower the cities across Europe to cooperate with national governments and industry to strengthen the overall local effectiveness and implementation of the national building renovation strategies required by the EPBD. To effectively accelerate the renovation process, the EU Member States are, apart from development of their renovation strategies, further required to set out specific roadmaps, including measurable progress indicators and milestones. BUILD UPON2 thus addresses one of the main barriers standing in the way of renovation process, being it the lack of an adequate, widely shared Impact Framework to track the renovation process and its implementation.
This pilot framework includes a suite of milestones and measurable progress indicators for city renovation strategies. It will monitor indicators such as the emissions reductions, increased employment and improved health. During the project, these data are captured locally in the chosen cities. At a national level, the framework is supposed to link renovation to policy and decision making process, leading to greater investments in renovation. Developed methodology by the project also indicates:
Testing of the Framework will be realized in 8 pilot cities, each located in different European country:
GBC España is the main Coordinator of the project accompanied by a think tank Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) and the municipal network Climate Alliance which leads the Covenant of Mayors Office-Europe. The consortium of eight national Green Building Councils consists of:
Success of this project should serve as a motivation and a "know-how" for cities around Europe to transform their national renovation strategies into more local city strategies to achieve the goal of the EU to completely decarbonize its building stock by 2050. For now, the goal of BUILD UPON2 is to motivate and see at least 10 more cities committing to establish their own strategies by 2021. For future instances, the developed Framework should become a cornerstone of and an inspiration for any building renovation process not only within the area of the European Union.
Find more information about WGBC here.
Find more information about BUILD UPON2 project and its partners here.