Written by Esad Smajlovic, Senior Energy Efficiency Advisor for GIZ
Energy Efficiency (EE) Consultancy is a GIZ project in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) in the field of EE. It provides technical assistance to different levels of governments to support their leading role as in implementing energy efficiency measures.
A group of experts from B&H’s mechanical and architectural faculties, certified auditors, engineers, and students from B&H produced the first Residential Building Typology book for B&H. Concretely, the data generated by a countrywide statistical survey made possible to identify 28 most typical buildings which best represent the country’s building stock. Typical residential buildings are divided into single family houses, terraced houses, multi-family houses, apartment blocks and high-rise buildings. Not only were energy audits performed for each of those types of buildings to document the projected energy consumption, but also proper estimation of the energy consumption in total country’s residential building stock was made.
Firstly, the Typology enables the decision makers to estimate which buildings have the largest energy saving potential against different EE measures and then how to set the policies, programs and renovation strategy. Secondly, and more importantly, the house owners as well as multi-apartment buildings’ homeowner associations are now able to detect which type of the typical buildings is the closest to their own building based on the year and type of construction. They can also assess the present state of energy consumption against good practices and learn what are the best legally defined EE measures that can be implemented.
Habitat for Humanity International is implementing the project of Residential Energy Efficiency for Low Income Households (REELIH) in Bosnia. REELIH completed several exemplary projects where the main issues were pre-solved: reaching consensus among citizens living in the same building to agree that they will participate in the process of building reconstruction, having relevant financial institutions providing proper loan packages, and having different levels of government securing appropriate subsidy schemes to co-share the costs.