The Eleventh International Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development organized by UNECE aims to bring together professionals from its member states to tackle the issue of access to affordable and clean energy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint. The Forum acknowledges the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for resolutions, but it also calls for focus on the need for a more sustainable environment. Therefore, the UNECE Forum will look into topics such as fossil fuels, achievement of Sustainable Development Goals, enhancing integration of the energy markets and the transition to a sustainable energy system.
This year, the UNECE Forum will be organized in a hybrid form with the majority of the events held online, through numerous workshops on sustainable energy and its role in achieving Sustainable Development Goals, mainly SDG 7. The UNECE Forum will be attended by international energy experts, government officials, and representatives from academia, businesses, and civil society.
We are happy to announce that also the second REELIH regional conference is featured among the events under the scope of the Forum.
The UNECE Forum will start with its first session - the Eight session of the Group of Experts on Energy Efficiency - already on September 20, 2021.
The group of experts will discuss the possibilities to improve energy efficiency in industry and buildings through the process and use of digitalization. Furthermore, the existing regulatory and policy barriers which disable the improvement of energy efficiency will be discussed.
The session is especially significant for the REELIH project as Andrew Popelka, a representative of the USAID, will contribute to the discussion with a short presentation about our in-depth comparative study Gap Analysis of the Housing Sector In Western Balkan Countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia VS. Slovak Republic. The study analyses the gaps in the housing sector in the Western Balkans from different perspectives, including housing legal and regulatory structures, energy efficiency of residential building stock, and finance.
As a matter of fact, the Gap analysis highlighted the REELIH project and the impact it has in the implementing countries - mainly by establishing new mechanisms that help people to find consensus and get capital for the renovation of multi-apartment buildings. To learn more about the analysis, see the full report here.
We invite everyone to join all the interesting sessions of the upcoming UNECE Forum that will start off with a discussion including also our contribution.
Read the Gap analysis here.
Find more information about the UNECE 11th International Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development here.
Recently, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) published three in-depth national studies focusing on the state of residential building stock in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and the Republic of Moldova.
The UNECE was set up in 1947 and it is one of five regional commissions of the United Nations. UNECE's major aim is to promote pan-European economic integration. UNECE includes 56 member states in Europe, North America and Asia and over 70 international professional organizations and other non-governmental organizations take part in and help UNECE achieve its objectives.
As a multilateral platform, UNECE helps in achieving greater economic integration and cooperation among its member states, as well as it promotes sustainable development and economic prosperity.
Out of all sectors of economic activity, the buildings sector has the largest potential for cost-effective improvement in energy efficiency and emissions reductions.
To help capitalize on this potential, UNECE has developed the three studies under the project “Enhancing National Capacities to Develop and Implement Energy Efficiency Standards for Buildings in the UNECE Region”.
The "National study and detailed gap analysis between the performance objectives of the Framework Guidelines for Energy Efficiency Standards in Buildings and implementation of current building energy efficiency standards in Armenia," is a report analyzing the energy performance of buildings, implementation of current building energy efficiency standards and providing country-specific recommendations to bridge gaps and enhance national capacity to develop and implement energy efficiency standards for buildings.
The main purpose is to highlight the state of multi-family apartment buildings (MFABs) in Armenia, especially concerning their energy performance. The report also includes some other important elements, such as the status of legislature and audits regarding energy performance in Armenia, as well as many other relevant policy and project highlights that succeeded in uplifting the situation in Armenia.
The national study in Armenia revealed that buildings are one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). 18 per cent of the total GHG emissions is from fuel consumption in the residential buildings. The share of the residential buildings in total final energy consumption is 38 per cent. At the same time, the building sector presents significant energy saving potential, which can be realized through the effective use of modern energy efficient technologies and practices, reinforcement of robust certification systems for energy efficient buildings, and energy efficiency lending by international and local financial institutions. The Government of Armenia has put efforts into effective enforcement of recently adopted legislation in the building sector. Some relevant technical regulations and standards have also been adopted to improve the effectiveness of the whole regulatory system in the building sector.
The report itself outlined the major deficiencies of MFABs, as well as some recommendations that should be taken into consideration, not only when it comes to the renovation of energy inefficient buildings built in the second half of the 20th century, but also when it comes to relevant legislation, maintenance, and cooperation between the major parties interested in improving Armenia's situation. In a major move, the report also drew attention to the fact that Armenia should be inspired by the way other post-socialist states dealt with these buildings, such as Czechia or Poland with their establishment of associations of housing unit owners, which centralized all the relevant decision-making, thus making renovation and upgrades easier.
As an example, energy audits of multiple residential buildings proposed a standard set of measures which can bring to as much as 65 per cent energy consumption reduction:
We are very glad to see Habitat for Humanity Armenia's long lasting efforts mentioned in the document, where UNECE recognizes their hard-work in partnership with universal credit organizations, with whom Habitat Armenia implemented housing microfinance projects that helped low- and middle-income families receive loans from financial institutions to improve their living conditions. These families used the loans to renovate and repair their homes, improve energy efficiency, and to create access to renewable energy. Through its housing microfinance projects, Habitat Armenia also provides technical assistance to families and partner financial institutions through training programs, construction technical advice and informational brochures. Other programs involve renovation of common areas of residential buildings, residential energy efficiency for low-income households and access to renewable and efficient energy in the municipalities of Vayk and Spitak.
Apart from these activities, Habitat Armenia has long been working on reforming the legislation on the management of multi-apartment buildings. The Armenian government reformed a law according to Habitat Armenia's recommendations in late 2020, which had been advocated for since 2015. According to this law, each building shall have a separate bank account for the management of its funds, which will increase the overall transparency of the fund management for each building. For more information, you can check this blog.
Armenia has a considerable untapped potential to improve the energy efficiency of its buildings, but several barriers and challenges must be addressed if notable progress is to be achieved in the coming decades.
In some cases, deep renovation is not possible in only one step, mostly because of the high initial investment. International collaboration is likely to remain the key for ensuring both the short-term success and the long-term viability of Armenia’s efforts. Best EU practices, already applied is some countries, show that renovation can be a long process that allows measures to be done step-by-step to maximize the final effect and reduce the energy consumption as much as possible.
As the report summarizes, Armenia still has a long way to go when it comes to energy efficient renovation. Despite this, the work that has already been done in rejuvenating the building stock makes a case for any future projects, as there definitely is a need and will to do more. The only thing that remains is to get the work done.
is a Regional Online Workshop that took place during the last week of February 2021. It was co-organized by the Ministry of Environment and Spatial planning of Slovenia and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), together with the support of Housing Europe, the Union for the Mediterranean and UN-Habitat. The event opened up for a discussion about the undersupply of affordable housing, homelessness, rising urban rents, low quality of housing and urban infrastructure, limited access to land for housing construction and renovation, and mounting urban poverty in the UNECE region. These challenges has been long on rise, however, the Covid-19 pandemic situation made the need of sustainable and affordable housing one of the most important policy challenges of current days.
Affordable and adequate housing is far from being a standard within the UNECE region and is especially important for vulnerable groups which at the same time suffer also from limited access to healthcare, fuel poverty and price inflation. Moreover, mounting unemployment connected with Covid-19 pandemic widens the number of people in the need of housing and other basic services even more. The UNECE, representing a diverse region with ranging national and local contexts of housing sector and its legal frameworks, decided to organize this online workshop to share knowledge and good practice for inspiration and allowing others to formulate viable and sustainable solutions to long-standing housing issues in this region together with responding to the world pandemic crisis.
The workshop was organized as a two days event. The first day of the workshop was dedicated to the theme of key international initiatives on affordable housing in Europe and on governance for affordable, adequate and healthy housing for all.
The morning of the second day was reserved for discussion of #Housing2030: Improving Housing Affordability in the UNECE Region. It is a new UNECE study under development with a goal of improving capacities of national and local governments to formulate policies that improve housing affordability and sustainability in the UNECE region. As one of the topics of this study addresses housing governance and regulation, the UNECE reserved this time for workshop session with a focus on the preparation of this chapter of the #Housing2030 study.
The final session of the two-day workshop called "Governance of the housing sector: Focus on South-East Europe" was oriented towards housing policies in countries of the South-Eastern Europe.
Andrew Popelka, a representative of the USAID which provides funding for REELIH project, contributed to the session with a comprehensive presentation of a new comparative study Gap Analysis of the Housing Sector In Western Balkan Countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia VS. Slovak Republic. The study identifies and analyses the gaps in housing regulations in the Western Balkans.
REELIH project is mentioned in this study to manifest its impact on establishing mechanisms that help people in REELIH implementing countries to find consensus and get finances for renovation of the multi-owner apartment buildings.
Andrew Popelka admits that the multi-owned apartment buildings lack the attention of the donors since the multi-ownership of the building complicates the overall decision making prior and also during the renovation works. That is another reason why REELIH works on creating more financing possibilities for these buildings, providing technical assistance and serving as a mediator in the complex environment of many stakeholders included.
We would like to thank the UNECE for organizing this workshop and to Andrew Popelka from USAID for his contribution to this workshop, again showcasing REELIH as a good practice in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.
Find more information about the UNECE workshop here.
Find a new comparative study by USAID here.
In countries of the UNECE region, existing normative instruments for buildings' energy performance range from voluntary guidelines to mandatory standards applying to different building types. Its development is a complex decision-making process involving variety of stakeholders, like for publicly, so for privately owned buildings. New UNECE publication Promoting Energy Efficiency Standards And Technologies To Enhance Energy Efficiency in Buildings aims to provide better understanding of the status of deployment and implementation of energy efficiency standards in buildings in the UNECE region based on data gathered through desk research and stakeholder outreach.
Our HFHI Advocacy Officer Zita Kakalejcikova and our partners Marin Petrovic from Enova, Liljana Alceva from HFH Macedonia, Varsenik Khloyan from HFH Armenia and Andrew Popelka from USAID are listed among contributors to this publication in regard to REELIH project.
In this publication, residential multi-apartment buildings are defined as structures used primarily as dwellings for one or more households. Within this understanding, they address challenges of climatic conditions, latitude, legislative acts, construction practices, existing building stock and maintenance practices and occupant behavior, including enforcement, training and monitoring mechanisms. The main challenges connected with residential multi-apartment buildings in "Subregions C" and "E" *, which cover all three REELIH project implementing countries-North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Armenia, are identified as follow:
Many countries, particularly in Subregion C, experience difficulties also in increasing market deployment of energy-efficient technologies stemming from incoherent policies in regard to financial incentives, lack of consumers awareness on benefits of such technologies, insufficiently developed building energy codes and lack of technical expertise.
On the other side, the publication highlights how smart solutions show good results in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Armenia because of government-supported implementation of municipal level energy management systems resulting in higher quality of energy action plans for municipalities, for residential multi-apartment buildings and public buildings.
Publication's chapter "Best Practices on Standards and Technologies for Energy Efficiency In Buildings" identifies best practices in adopting, implementing and enforcing energy efficiency standards and energy-efficient technologies for buildings in the UNECE region. These examples are organized into sections based on their performance in legislative and behavior change, technical measures, and financial mechanisms. REELIH countries are included in the following sections:
Habitat for Humanity International thanks UNECE for recognizing all successful work done in REELIH projects and USAID and our other partners for their continuous support in these projects.
Find the publication in full here.
*UNECE member States are divided into specific subregions based on their geographical location:
Subregion A: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom;
Subregion B: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia;
Subregion C: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan;
Subregion D: Canada, United States of America;
Subregion E: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia;
Subregion F: Turkey.
Israel and San Marino are not listed due to insufficiency of data required for this study.
Being a long-standing partner of UNECE, especially of its Committee on Urban Development, Housing and Land Management, Habitat on Humanity International has cooperated with UNECE on several projects already. Most recently, we have contributed to a new issue of Guidelines on Condominium Management and several of our projects were published in UNECE Compendium of Best Practices. Apart from the publications, our Policy and Advocacy Associate Director, Gyorgy Sumeghy, has been a member of the UNECE Real Estate Market Advisory Group since 2016. This team of specialists assists the Committee on Housing and Land Management and the Working Party on Land Administration to develop stronger real estate markets, addressing the energy efficiency of building stock, affordable and social housing, housing finance, property valuation and registration and land markets and administration.
During the first week of October 2019, annual UNECE's Sustainable Cities Week took place in Geneva. In the name of "Affordable housing and urban infrastructure for all groups of the population", the discussions of the week were held about the progress and challenges related to the implementation of recent international agreements such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the New Urban Agenda and the Geneva UN Charter on Sustainable Housing. Representatives of national and local governments, private sector, academia and civil society met together to present and discuss with the wider public, as the Sustainable Cities Week is open for everyone interested in the topic.
Among other participants, Gyorgy Sumeghy representing Habitat for Humanity International likewise got an opportunity to speak on a panel dedicated to "Ensuring access to decent, adequate, affordable and health housing for all". He presented main lessons learned from Habitat for Humanity and USAID's REELIH project implemented in Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia, where 30 % to 70% of existing housing stock consists of pre-fabricated multi-storey apartment buildings built between 1960s and 1990s.
There are several key challenges that the REELIH project faces in the countries where it is implemented, when trying to create a functioning market for residential energy efficiency refurbishments. Among others, these are low level of income in general, lack of "ownership" among home-owners, weak legislation for Home-Owner Associations (HOAs), limited access to finance of HOAs and energy poverty in the family and multi-family housing.
REELIH project succeeded in delivering initiatives that helped solving the challenges of residential energy efficiency (REE) in project countries by:
On advocacy level, two areas of influence were recognized:
Thanks to this project, EU-level awareness raising takes place. REELIH project practice is used as an example for further knowledge sharing such as in UNECE Compendium of Best Practices.
In spite of all hard work and successful stories from REELIH project, energy poverty is far from being defeated. Most of all, it is crucial to define the relation mechanisms between residential energy efficiency and alleviation of energy poverty.
This task is challenging due to lacking data from many regions and high share of solid fuels, like wood and coal, used in countryside. Another influencing factor is the nature of HOAs which in fact have mixed social composition and apart from supporting just renovation of buildings, it is important to support individual households, too.
For the research of energy poverty and residential energy efficiency, we have cooperated with Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest and Building Performance Institute Europe, Brussels. We plan to present the completed research at the regional REELIH conference early next year in Brussels, so stay tuned!
Habitat for Humanity contributed to the new UNECE Guidelines on the Management and Ownership of Condominium Housing thanks to being part of Real Estate Market Advisory Group.
UNECE Real Estate Market Advisory Group consists of specialists assisting the Committee on Housing and Land Management and the Working Party on Land Administration to develop stronger housing real estate markets. Its activities include discussion of energy efficient housing, affordable and social housing, its financing and others.
Being a member of this group, we were able to contribute to reviewing of original document of Guidelines on Condominium Ownership of Housing for Countries in Transition published in 2003. While this original guideline was mostly targeting the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the new Guidelines on the Management and Ownership of Condominium Housing focuses on all the UNECE countries; including Western Europe, the United States and Canada. Successfully updated publication of guidelines was formally approved on October 4th, 2018 during the 79th session of the UNECE Committee on Housing and Land Management held in Geneva.
Throughout the last year, this small group of specialists was meeting regularly and discussed many challenges not only of Central and Eastern European region. HFHI comments and messages touched exclusively the CEE and CIS countries based on our experience and expertise in this region. Thanks to our REELIH project and regional advocacy done in relation to it, we took this chance to push our messages and provided professional advice.
As the cornerstones for our claims we used three documents developed in regards to REELIH project and Visegrad Four project in Armenia done by HFH Armenia:
HOW TO IMPROVE RESIDENTIAL ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE AND CIS:
POLICY DISCUSSION BRIEF FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
ANALYSIS OF SUBSIDY SCHEMES AIMING TO SUPPORT ENERGY EFFICIENT RENOVATION OF MULTI-FAMILY BUILDINGS IN SELECTED COUNTRIES OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE:
LESSONS FOR ARMENIA AND BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
LEGAL-REGULATORY SOLUTIONS FOR STRENGHTENING CIVIC INVOLVEMENT IN CONDOMINIUM MANAGEMENT IN ARMENIA:
UTILIZING THE KNOWLEDGE WEALTH FROM VISEGRAD STATES AND UKRAINE
Rapid rate of privatization of public housing, lack of maintenance and rising energy costs led to the emergence of low-income homeowners phenomenon and their inability to cope with the situation. Moreover, the collective decision-making of new homeowners brought other complications, that ended up with slow deterioration of multi-apartment buildings.
Find more information about condominium management guidelines here.
Find the press release about new publication here.