nZEB trainings have been launched
NEWS FROM EUROPE
06.05.2019
Written by Energiaklub
Public buildings represent about 12% of the Central Europe building stock area and inadequate energy performances of these buildings present a serious financial burden for cities and regions.
The Energy Efficiency Directive forces local and regional authorities to play a leading role in implementing EU energy and climate policy by setting a 3% annual renovation target for public buildings. A key element of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, especially for achieving these longer term objectives, is its requirements regarding nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (nZEBs) that obligates member states to ensure that from 01.2019 new buildings and buildings which undergo major renovation occupied and owned by public authorities have to be nZEBs.
However, these ambitious targets are hindered by lack of capacity, trust and financial resources to fully implement nZEB projects in Central Europe. Although a lot of regions and cities in Central Europe have established a framework for long term sustainable energy development (through SEAPs and regional programmes), nZEB still represents a novelty in elaboration of deep renovation strategies due to the lack of dedicated assessment tools and financing schemes.
Capacity of public authorities in targeted regions to carry out large scale nZEB renovations is not sufficient, exacerbated by the sub-optimal investment flows in this sector.
eCentral team find crucial to provide suitable tools, background information and support to local public authorities to increase the nZEB refurbishment rate in Central-European countries. As a tool for this capacity building, a training curriculum has been developed during 2018, and its implementation has been started as well: the first nZEB training targeting local public authorities has been implemented successfully in Croatia by REGEA in May 2019, using the common curriculum elaborated by eCentral partners.
Main objectives of these trainings focusing on the renovation of public buildings planned to be organized in Slovenia and Hungary besides Croatia are:
- to deliver technical and financial knowledge on nZEB
- to enable participants to understand the financial and environmental benefits of nZEBs and develop new skills, such as the use of nZEB tool developed in the frame of eCentral project and
- to facilitate their transition to inspired and motivated nZEB project developers
Curriculum of nZEB trainings consists of two main parts: 1) knowledge transfer and 2) interactive workshop enabling skills development. Knowledge transfer includes four modules:
- nZEB principles and country specific regulation
- technologies in reaching nZEB
- innovative financing schemes, especially energy performance contracting, public private partnership and crowdfunding which are deeply assessed (theoretically but also in practice) by eCentral project and
- tendering nZEB projects
Following our plans, at least four trainings will be performed in each target country, with at least seven participants/training in average.
Trainings will also be used to create a pipeline of future nZEB projects in each partner country by bringing together public authorities, ESCOs, financial institutions, investors from private sector and crowdfunding platform operators.
