Energy Performance of European Buildings

The existing buildings stock in European countries accounts for over 40% of final energy consumption in the European Union (EU) member states. Consequently, an increase of building energy performance can constitute an important instrument in the efforts to alleviate the EU energy import dependency and comply with the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This is also in accordance to the European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD), which is currently under implementation in all EU member states. This paper presents an overview of EPBD and ongoing national activities, and focus on building energy performance assessment methodologies, in line with the EPBD. These methods and software can be used to perform building energy audits and assess buildings in a uniform way, perform demand and savings calculations, provide owners with specific advice for measures that can improve energy performance, and issue an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) for existing buildings. Another ongoing European project is developing a common database structure and an evaluation scheme, which is being used to collect, process and evaluate data from 12 European countries. The results will constitute a good basis for the implementation of harmonized monitoring systems in the building sector on regional and national level.