Effectiveness of energy efficiency regulatory tools in the housing sector

Effectiveness of energy efficiency regulatory tools in the housing sector

Visscher, H.J.

Architecture and The Built Environment

OTB

2015-12-09

The urgent need for a dramatic reduction of fossil fuels in the built environment is without any doubt. The energy saving potential of the building stock is considered to be large and to be the most cost efficient sector to contribute to the CO2 reductions. Goals set by the European Union are to build net zero energy buildings in 2020 and to reach an energy neutral building stock by 2050. The current practice shows that the energy saving goals can only be reached by strict and supportive governmental policies. In Europe the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive are driving forces for EU Member States to develop and strengthen energy performance regulations controlled within the building permit procedures for new buildings and energy performance certificates (labels) for the building stock. This paper analyses the consequences of these developments for the systems of building regulations and control. It appears that these very ambitious goals require a review and innovation of the regulatory systems and tools. The current approaches seem to be inadequate to deal with the new challenges. This is concluded from ongoing research that shows that aims of regulations in general and energy saving goals in particular, are hardly realized in practice.

building control
building regulations
housing stock
energy performance
energy saving

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6125f452-b6f2-4ab6-8c61-6340f1a26a59

CIB (International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction)

978-0-7988-5624-9

SASBE 2015: Proceedings of the 5th CIB International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environments, Pretoria, South Africa, 9-11 December 2015

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2015 The Author(s)