1 - Benchmarking
Intercomparison of requirement levels in Member States
As requested by the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) all Member States of the European Union have implemented energy performance requirements for new buildings, or will do this in due time. The strictness of the requirement levels is, for now, set on national level.
For various stakeholders an intercomparison of requirement levels between Member States is relevant. However, given the differences in EP assessment methodologies, climatic conditions, building practices and building use, the straightforward intercomparison of requirement levels in Member States does not give interpretable results. A good intercomparison methodology is needed to help overcome barriers for effective future tightening of the requirement levels.
The main objective of this work package is to develop an instrument for intercomparison of EP requirement levels between Member States. With this instrument we intent to obtain a good and comparable overview of the EPBD requirement levels in the different Member States.
A good comparison is crucial for the European Commission in order to monitor and judge the progress of the EP requirements of individual MS: in which MS do the minimum EP requirements have a large potential to be tightened and which MS already has very strict EP requirements? Is it realistic to expect from a MS a steep improvement of the energy requirements? Is it realistic that a MS shows only a gentle improvement?
The comparison of the energy performance requirement levels in Europe is not only interesting to the European Institutions (in particular the Commission). Also the Member States themselves like to know where they stand compared to their neighbours. And since Member States with comparable requirement levels are bound to have similar challenges when further tightening their requirements, it is good to know which countries to turn to in sharing experiences and for finding possible solutions.
Information on the energy performance requirement levels of various countries in Europe can be of interest to industrial parties as well. Depending on the requirement levels certain new technologies could become of interest in a country.
The instrument to be developed is far from trivial. In spite of the harmonisation efforts by the European Standardisation Committee (CEN), the calculation methods to assess the energy performance levels differ from country to country, at least for the time being. And even with harmonised standards there are large differences between countries related to building use, indoor climate conditions, outdoor climate, construction practice, availability, usability and cost of technologies and labour, levels of compliance with the regulation, to name only a few.
Tasks to address this issue
Development of the instrument
Our first step in this work package is to develop an instrument for making meaningful comparisons of minimum EP requirements in the individual Member States and for monitoring of the progress. Because in general the results will differ per type of building use, we will concentrate mainly on residential buildings and offices.
There are different possible ways to come to a sensible useful comparison. None of them on itself will come to a perfect comparison of the EP requirement levels in the MS. Therefore we will investigate the pros and cons of these options and test the most fruitful ones in pilot tests.
Besides the methodology of comparison, also the way to present the results needs investigation. A simple list wise presentation of comparison of the EP requirements in the MS might not do justice to the many factors which differ per MS and influence the energy use and EP assessment (like climate, building use and building practice). Again we will investigate various options, with their pros and cons, in order to develop a refined representation method.
An even more important issue we need to cover is: what to do when the final instruments contain different methods which result in different results (this will probably be the case!): can the results simply be added/averaged to get an overall minimum requirement level, is a weighted average possible or do we need to present the results from different methods separately? In any case it is essential we develop a good guidance to interpret the results.
After investigating and testing several comparison methods and ways of presenting the results with pro's and con's, we will make a final decision and finalise the instrument.
Benchmarking
Next we intent to use the instrument to make a first intercomparison of the minimum EP requirement levels in the MS. Several cross sections will be made and will reveal valuable information on the potential progress MS can make in the future. The results from this study will be used to refine the instrument.
Barriers and good practice examples
Countries are facing different problems related to the setting and tightening of the requirements. It will be interesting to see how other countries with similar requirement levels solved their problems. Therefore we will analyse a selection of striking differences in minimum EP levels between Member States for possible barriers and good practice examples.