EU POLITICIANS HAVE voted in favour of sweeping new policies for buildings to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions.

The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive uses a common system for buildings’ energy performance standards across the EU – similar to the system already in place for household appliances such as ovens and washing machines – and requires member states to improve their performance over time.  

Member states will need to upgrade their worst-performing buildings by one to three places on the standards scale in the next ten years, either through renovation or more broadly through the energy grid or locally-sourced renewables.

The directive requires member states to create a national building renovation plan to decarbonise their building stock by 2050 – though it provides exceptions for historical buildings.

It also sets out a framework for how funding streams for renovations should be handled and says that tenants in rental housing should be protected from rent increases or evictions due to renovations.

From 2028, all new buildings should produce zero emissions and should be equipped with solar technologies (“where technically suitable and economically feasible”).

The proposal came before the Parliament in Strasbourg today after negotiations by a committee of MEPs that was led by Irish Green Party MEP Ciarán Cuffe.

MEPs voted 343 in favour and 216 against the new directive, which will now move forward to negotiations with the EU Council to agree on its final shape.

A dodgy microphone in the parliament after the vote gave rise to a quip from Cuffe that it highlighted the “compelling case for the renovation of buildings”.

Speaking after the vote, he said that “the European Parliament has spoken today: we will not stand by while people are living in cold, draughty homes and paying through the nose for energy”.

Instead, we have delivered a solution that will provide lower energy bills, affordable renovations, and protection for people living in energy poverty.

“It also has the potential to significantly reduce Europe’s CO2 emissions, and strikes a blow to Europe’s dependence on fossil gas imports. It is a win for people and the planet.”

The MEP spoke about the directive to The Journal’s climate newsletter Temperature Check last month, saying it would “put pressure on countries to increase the rates of renovation and to upgrade their buildings”.

“We are saying in the law that we want to target the worst performing buildings. The new G energy rating will be the 15% of buildings that are the worst-performing buildings in those countries,” Cuffe explained.

“Then, the A energy rating, we’re redefining it as a zero-emissions building. These are buildings that get all their energy from renewables or from an efficient district heating system, or indeed from what we call energy communities where people work together to provide energy within a neighbourhood,” he said.

 “What does this mean in practical terms? With the technologies, obviously insulation, insulation, insulation, but also heat pumps and rooftop solar panels. All of these technologies will help us on the way to zero emission buildings.”

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In further climate votes in the parliament today, MEPs adopted a new goal for reducing emissions from the land use and forestry sector.

Widespread support – 479 votes in favour to 97 against – was given to increasing EU and national targets for boosting the sector’s carbon sinks – that is, the ways that nature can absorb and store carbon dioxide emissions, instead of the emissions being released and contributing to the climate crisis.

The EU’s 2030 target for net greenhouse gas removals in the sector will be set at 310 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, an increase of 15%, while member states will have nationally binding 2030 targets for removals and emissions.

MEPs also voted to reduce the maximum level of greenhouse gas emissions member states are allowed to produce from the transport, buildings and agriculture sectors, which together account for around 60% of the bloc’s emissions. This vote comes under an EU mechanism called the Effort Sharing Regulation.

The EU is seeking to reduce emissions across the bloc by 57% by 2050, a target arising from its commitments under the international Paris Agreement on climate action.

In 2015, the Paris Agreement called for countries to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees and not to allow it to surpass 2 degrees.

Currently, the world is around 1.1 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times and is already experiencing impacts of the climate crisis such as heatwaves, droughts and melting ice sheets.