With this Communication, released in February 2016, the European Commission presents the first strategy to optimise buildings' and industries' heating and cooling in order to tackle the massive use of energy, particularly fossil fuels, in the sector. Heating and cooling accounts for 50% of the energy consumption in the European Union, and renewables account for just 18% of this.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Building Energy Codes Program (BECP) periodically evaluates national and state-level impacts associated with energy codes in residential and commercial buildings. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), funded by DOE, conducted an assessment of the prospective impacts of national model building energy codes from 2010 through 2040. A previous PNNL study evaluated the impact of the Building Energy Codes Program; this study looked more broadly at overall code impacts.

European legislation makes nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (nZEBs) a standard by 2020. The technology is available and proven; however, the large-scale uptake of nZEB construction and renovation remains a challenge. ZEBRA2020 monitored the market uptake of nZEBs across Europe and provided data and knowledge on how to reach the nZEB standard. This information was structured and analysed to derive recommendations. ZEBRA2020 covers 17 European countries and almost 90% of the EU/EEA building stock and population.

Developed as a common EU framework of core indicators for the sustainability of office and residential buildings, Level(s) provides a set of indicators and common metrics for measuring the environmental performance of buildings along their life cycle. As well as environmental performance, which is the main focus, it also enables other important related aspects of the performance of buildings to be assessed using indicators for health and comfort, life cycle cost and potential future risks to performance.

The ABRACADABRA project is developing a toolkit, targeting policy makers, with a focus on regulatory challenges and opportunities for boosting energy retrofitting of buildings. For this purpose, the project will investigate regulatory issues, as well as available good practices, in the project’s target countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Romania, Spain, and the Netherlands).

The purpose of the framework is to create a clear and coherent climate policy.

Retrofitting has been proposed as a method to significantly reduce energy consumption and emission derived from the housing sector. Having said this it remains clear that severe restraints remain; and the concept of a “one solution fits all” is at the very least unrealistic. As it has been repeatedly supported via the Abracadabra project any potential solution must deal with significantly complex issues at technical, legislative and regulatory levels, and of course at financial and economic levels.

The Green Building Council of Australia with the Property Council of Australia, Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heating (AIRAH), Energy Efficiency Council, Facilities Management Association of Australia, City of Sydney, City of Melbourne and CitySwitch have produced a policy framework addressing the potential opportunities presented by increasing the energy efficiency requirements for mid-tier buildings.

In a prior study entitled “Mapping of Existing Energy Efficiency Standards and Technologies in Buildings in the UNECE Region”, the UN Committee on Housing and Land Management (CHLM) and the Committee on Sustainable Energy (CSE) commissioned a comparative study on building standards in the UNECE region. The current report follows up on this by analyzing the actual prevalence of specific types of energy-efficient technologies in the buildings sector in the UNECE region, along with the levels and types of public policy interventions supporting their implementations.