3rd EnercitEE Symposium in October 2012 in Leipzig

Sarah Nilsson, Component 3 Manager of EnercitEE

All 11 sub-projects shared their experiences in several sessions

The first part of the symposium was up to the 11 Lead Partners from all EnercitEE sub-projects reporting from their joint work, their progress made and intermediate results. Every partner underlined the prospective benefit and outcomes. They also jointly shared their experience on their biggest success, biggest challenge, on lessons learnt and improvements made in the participating regions in the course of the project. Further, the participants dealt with future prospects.
Read more about the sub-projects results here.

EPBD – how do you do it?

Part II of the symposium focused on the special topic of “Energy Efficient Buildings + Innovation” and went deeply into related regional EE policy settings and implementations in EnercitEE regions. There was a training session and two workshops where different aspects of energy efficient buildings and innovations were lightened. We could never imagine that the differences were so large when we compared how our regions and countries are implementing the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, short EPBD. Not only do we monitor in different ways, the implementation is also very different. It seems like all countries except Sweden and Poland have made a sincere attempt to implement the directive. Sweden has proposed to keep the current building code and Poland has difficulties to enforce the directive, Sweden has no funding or support for implementation and the government is even trying to find a way to stop local authorities to have stronger energy performance rules for new buildings than the national. Poland has national funding but there is a lack of knowledge and also a communication gap between different actors involved in the implementation.

Germany, France and Italy all have strong regulations and subsidies that pave the way for implementation but also here, there are some problems for implementation. All regions pointed out high costs for energy efficiency measures in existing buildings stock as a main obstacle for implementation. There was a common opinion that the EU decides about the EPBD but does not give any means or tools to implement it. The experts asked both for plain subsidies and for other tools like funding instruments and loans.

Study visit

Finally there was a study visit to a school, Wilhelm-Ostwald-Gymnasium Leipzig, which was renovated to passive house standard, a good practice transfer that completed the intention of the seminar. The school had an advanced monitoring and steering system for ventilation and heating that was demonstrated. There was even an opportunity to see a blower door test of the building and we could conclude that this envelope was really air tight.

For more information (summary, presentations, etc.) on 3^rd EnercitEE symposium click here.