by Silvia Ellena
While the EU is planning to decarbonise buildings across the bloc to advance the green transition, local authorities are calling for more support to face a shortage of skilled workers to design and implement decarbonisation projects.
Back in December, the European Commission tabled a proposal to accelerate the energy renovation of worst performing buildings, introducing minimum energy performance standards.
With the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), the EU also aims to reduce the bloc’s reliance on fossil fuels in line with the green transition.
Decarbonising buildings is becoming even more important in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the tensions surrounding energy supplies.
Rethinking the system locally could be “a solution to reduce the import of gas and to reduce also the geopolitical tensions,” said Melanie Bourgeois, policy officer at Energy Cities, a European Association of local authorities.
In Europe, buildings account for around 40% of energy consumption. While almost 75% of the EU’s building stock is energy inefficient, only 0.4-1.2% is renovated every year.
Renovating building is costly and can take a long time. For a County in Southern Germany with 256,000 inhabitants, energy refurbishment of eight buildings and the construction of two new buildings would cost €84.4 million by 2030 and take up to 6 years.
In the Netherlands, AEDES, an organisation representing housing associations, estimates that insulating the worst, least energy efficient homes to category B in the EU energy label standards will cost a total of €4.6 billion in investments.
Green MEP Ciaran Cuffe, the lead negotiator for the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in the Parliament is currently pushing for a neighbourhood approach involving the whole community in renovations.
“We want EU countries to empower local actors to take the lead and ensure that renovations offer benefits to the larger community, not simply individual households,” he told EURACTIV.
To make sure communities lead the transition, information is key, according to Ronan Dantec, French Senator for Loire-Atlantique and spokesperson for AFCCRE, the Association Francaise du Conseil des Communes et Regions d’Europe.
“We know that it is difficult for people to understand what they have to do,” he told EURACTIV, adding that municipalities “need a lot of people to inform the population.”
Yet, many European cities are currently facing a staff shortage that limits their capacity to boost the decarbonisation of buildings.
Building in-house expertise
A recent study by Energy Cities shows there is a city staffing shortfall of 214,000 new local positions to begin decarbonising the building sector.
“The problem is not not having access to money, but it’s that the pipeline of projects is not coming because there is not the in-house expertise,” said Alix Bolle, policy manager at Energy Cities.
Without in-house knowledge, smaller cities have to rely on external contractors to design and monitor projects and they cannot build up their own expertise in the field.
“The expertise doesn’t stay with the administration, so there is really a need to build the local workforce within the administration.”
Funding the transition
According to Bourgeois, municipalities need additional funding to address the skills gap.
In her view, the money could come from the Recovery funds, from Cohesion policy, but also from the ELENA funding, a fund proposed by the European Investment Bank as technical assistance to help cities and local authorities develop technical skills.
The Committee of the Regions (CoR) also asked for “adequate financial and technical resources” for cities and regions. In its opinion on the draft directive adopted on Thursday (30 June), the EU’s regional consultative body called for “significant efforts in building and training adequate skills and capacities, to address the shortage of skilled workers” and for “a formal, specialist, high quality training plan” for the authorities across member states.
Meanwhile, activists and local authorities are also urging the EU to make sure smaller cities and rural areas are not left behind.
In Dantec’s view, it is mostly rural areas that struggle to find staff to develop their decarbonisation programmes.
According to Bolle, funding for towns and rural areas is limited, as funds linked to tenders and EU programmes usually end up in the same pockets.
This is the case for the EU Mission to deliver 100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030, she said. “It’s a very good framework, but it’s going to the usual suspects, cities that already have the resources, and are already advancing the transition.”
*first published in: www.euractiv.com
By: N. Peter Kramer
