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MEMBERS OF THE European Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy Committee today voted in favour of a plan to retrofit all public buildings across the continent in order improve energy efficiency for buildings.
The parliament’s energy performance of buildings directive (EPBD), which could cost a reported €1 trillion, was passed by the committee with 37 votes in favour, 20 against and six abstentions.
The EPBD looks to upgrade, on a gradual scale, the energy ratings of every building in the European Union to combat the energy use of older buildings.
The plan will initially start with retrofitting publicly owned buildings by 2050 and later drafting plans to allow for homeowners to do the same. It also lays out directives that all new buildings should have zero emissions by 2030.
In December, after intense and long negotiations between the parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union, – what’s known as ‘trilogue’ – the wording of the directive was agreed upon.
This evening the committee took the first steps to greenlight the plan, with hopes it reaches the parliament for a vote in March.
Rapporteur of the bill, Irish Green Party MEP Ciarán Cuffe, posted the announcement on X, formerly Twitter, and welcomed the committee’s successful vote.
Steady progress at the energy committee this evening with a strong yes vote for our greener buildings plan.
— Ciarán Cuffe (@CiaranCuffe) January 15, 2024
Next & final stop: full Parliament vote #EPBD pic.twitter.com/3cTC3Ag7E1
Cuffe said: “Steady progress at the energy committee this evening with a strong yes vote for our greener buildings plan.”
Fine Gael MEP and member of the committee Seán Kelly also welcomed the deal and said the parliament cannot ignore the importance of retrofitting the buildings if it is to meet its climate deal deadline of 2050.
Kelly, who led negotiations at trilogue on behalf of the European People’s Party (Fine Gael’s European parliamentary group), said: “This is a very positive outcome and paves the way for a plenary vote on the deal by March.
“Negotiations on this directive were challenging, which reflects the complex subject matter. Reaching political agreement has not been easy and I have worked particularly hard in winning cross-party support for the overall revision in that regard,” he added.
The revised rules aim to ensure that by 2030, all new buildings in the EU are zero-emission structures, and by 2050, existing building stock undergoes a transformation into zero-emission buildings.
The plan has run into resistance in some EU countries, particularly ones with older housing stock such as Italy.
The measure is a part of the EU’s Green Deal which looks to decrease the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere, reaching a carbon neutral status by 2050.
Around one-third of buildings in the EU are over 50 years old, and almost three-quarters of the building stock is energy inefficient. Right now, about 1% of buildings are being retrofitted each year.
In Ireland, just over 27,000 buildings were retrofitted in 2022. The government’s National Retrofit Plan aims to have half a million homes retrofitted by the end of 2030.
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So in the end, Epic wants to use the Apple logistics system to deliver their apps to the users, but not to share their profits then.
Like when you ask Tesco to provide you with a few squaremeters in all of their shops for free to sell your products, use their trucks to deliver your goods to the shops for free and then sell vouchers for your products online and demand Tesco to accept those vouchers on their tills. And of course, if Tesco won’t advertise your product in their leaflets or try to charge you any fees for using their infrastructure, you’d sue them because of their monopolist behaviour.
@Claudia Varell: apple are taking far too big a cut of the profits and it has a knock on affect for the whole gaming industry, apple made more money off there 30% cut of ingame purchases than Nintendo xbox playstation and stadia combined did on there total sales, its madness and epic were right to stand up to them as it can be make or break for so many of the small companies that are losing all the profits to apple, the gaming industry is in danger of becoming only for the big guys and indie games have to fight so hard to even be seen never mind available to purchase
@Claudia Varell: I don’t think Tesco make a 30% profit on anything they sell, they work on a low margin model.
@Claudia Varell: In fairness, consumers own the hardware and apple have monopolized the only means of getting an app into it
Is anyone of you aware what Apples services include? Let’s say you write a book and sell it in Argentina. Do you know that you are liable for paying the correct VAT there and follow all regulations of the Argentinian market? The same applies if a German buys your book, someone in Australia, and so on. Especially for small content providers or the “Indie game developers” this is a huge barrier. You probably need to hire tax consultants in several countries or pay an agent.
If you sell through Apple, you don’t need to care. You can also give away your content for free without needing to care about distribution or anything and make yourself a name in the industry.
On top, you don’t need to sell through Apple, if you like to go on your own.
@Claudia Varell: Yeah you don’t need to care about all that as Apple don’t pay tax.. Apple taking a 30% cut, or whatever it is, just for providing the backend infrastructure for downloading to Apple device’s is absolutely extortionate. Should be done on some of sliding scale.
Apple have become very proprietary. I love their products. Hate their ecosystem.
Apple has always been proprietary. I worked there in the 1980’s and it was exactly the same then. In fact their completely integrated ecosystem is one of the things I love.
I understand that Apple are an extremely rich company that made some significant innovations years ago and have a fantastically loyal customer base but I’m not sure what their play is here.
If people can’t get the latest versions of Fortnite on their iPhone, surely they’ll get an Android or ask their parents for one?
But I guess it’s more about the principal of being able to squeeze app developers for all they’re worth so they can add more Money to their cash pile.
@Fifty Shades of Sé: You are aware that Google kicked Fortnite out of their Android Google Playstore as well?
@Claudia Varell: it’s still possible to download it onto an Android device though.
@Claudia Varell: You are massively missing the point. The entire issue here is not that they were kicked out of the store, but that the store is the only way for Iphone users to download it.
With android, that’s not the case so Google removing it from the play store doesn’t stop you from selling it on the android platform.
It’s the equivalent of not being able to download photoshop on your PC because Mocrosoft banned it from their store.
@Gavin Conran: No it’s not Gavin. When you buy a PC it’s running MS operating system, so of course you know it will run MS, Adobe applications etc. When you buy a Mac you know it will run Apple apps and ‘probably’ third party ones too, but if you expect it will run them all you didn’t sign up for the right hardware. Same with iOS. If you don’t want to part of the Apple offerings just go buy some other krap instead.
AAA gaming should have crashed in the 2010s, one of the greediest industries around.
have your say