Energy Efficiency

Green Homes: towards energy-efficient housing

The housing sector is one of the priority areas with regard to energy efficiency in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) region –not only because it consumes a great amount of energy, but also because it remains remarkably wasteful. While the state of existing technology provides a high potential to a drastically reduced energy use in housing, the sector actually maintains outdated, with inefficient practices, and is one of the drivers of even higher levels of consumption. The UNECE report 'Green Homes: towards energy-efficient housing in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe region' outlines the economic, social and environmental impacts of the problem, and considers current policies, solutions and barriers to effective policies.

SunCities, ensuring cleaner energy systems

The SunCities project is an ambitious and innovative project, implemented by European local and regional authorities from four countries: the Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom and Spain. Together with relevant market parties they will construct over 1,700 low to zero-emission houses and 3.05 MWp of PV (Megawatt peak of photovoltaic sun-panels).

Ekoviikki - Sustainable City Projects in Helsinki

Ekoviikki in Helsinki is the largest sustainable building site in Finland. There are demonstrated a range of environmental and energy concepts and it introduces new planning approaches for sustainable suburbs.

Residential building for young people designed to meet environmental criteria - Mataró (Barcelona), ES

The building incorporates different criteria to achieve environmental sustainability.

Thermal solar energy obligation in residential buildings in Seville, ES

Seville City Council has issued a regulation that involves installing thermalsolar energy systems in all new buildings.

"Stock take": delivering improvements in existing housing - UK

Examines the potential for significantly improved resource efficiency in the existing housing stock.

Sureuro (Sustainable Refurbishment in Europe) - Danish activity

Sustainable renovation in a deprived residential building implemented with resident participation.

HOMESERVICES_Benchmarking_Sustainable_Services_for_the_Housing_Sector_in_the_City_of_Tomorrow

Breakthrough needed for energy saving in homes

Climate street parties, energy boxes, model homes: these are just some of the examples of city projects aimed at saving energy in existing homes. There are much more examples which are mainly aimed at informing people and at raising awareness. However, these initiatives alone are not sufficient. Chairman, Mirjam de Rijk, alderman in Utrecht (the Netherlands), together with the advisory board Sustainable City Development of Nicis Institute, have formulated some recommendations for fellow city officials and the Dutch government about saving energy in existing houses.

GREENOV: stimulating sustainable renovation in in North West Europe

European buildings are responsible for a considerable part of the EU energy consumption (40%) and CO2 emissions (36%). In order to meet the Kyoto climate change commitments and the EU Climate & Energy objectives, energy efficiency of the built environment must be improved. Because of the low European replacement rate of the building stock (1% per year), retrofitting existing buildings provides the solution. This sustainable renovation shows more complexities than new eco-constructions, namely because new eco-constructions already incorporate more recent technical solutions, while existing buildings require different solutions adjusted to specific needs.

Shelter to map the structure of project teams employed by Social Housing Organisations in energy upgrading of existing housing schemes

The Shelter project aims to map the structure of project teams that are employed by Social Housing Organisations in the energy upgrading of existing housing schemes. The intention is to identify the optimum team structure in the expectation that using the optimum team will lead to significant improvements in the final energy performance of the projects to which it is applied. This is akin to investigating models of integrated project delivery.