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Media
EuroACE 's Articles , Quotes, Interviews and Advocacy ads in the Media.
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 Sector calls for EU building renovation roadmap
Published in ENDS Europe - 11 October 2011
A group of organisations led by trade association EuroACE has called for investment in major renovations to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. A report conducted by institute BPIE recommends the adoption of a renovation roadmap.[...]
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 Building efficiency: The 'two stage' solution
Published in Euractiv - 11 October 2011
Renovating Europe’s buildings for deep efficiency in two stages would result in 71% energy savings across Europe by 2050 and create 800,000 clean energy jobs - at less than two thirds the price of one-off deep renovations, a new report says.
"In the ‘two stage’ scenario we see the highest level of energy savings, one of the lowest investment costs and the highest CO2 emissions reductions,” said Adrian Joyce, the secretary-general of EuroAce, an alliance of energy efficient building companies.[...]
Renovate Europe, an energy efficiency pressure group, is now considering the two-stage idea as having "stand out" potential to assuage EU member state reluctance to invest in "promising" energy savings, during a fiscal crisis.
The EU’s energy efficiency directive recently proposed a 3% buildings renovation target for heat loss, but only for public buildings – 12% of Europe’s stock – just for minimum energy performance requirements, and with opt outs for social housing and small properties.
EuroAce supports a deeper 3% target per annum for all European buildings, without exceptions.[...]
"One of the objectives of our campaign is to make ‘boring’ the new ‘sexy’ ” .
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EU urged to focus on rural energy needs, carbon solutions
Published in EurActiv 23 September 2011
[...] Adrian Joyce, secretary general of the European alliance of companies for energy efficiency in buildings (EuroACE), stressed that "energy efficiency is a must if you are serious about preserving valuable resources". Joyce recalled that fossil fuels – oil, coal and gas – are not only energy sources, they are also used in the production of plastics and pharmaceutical products. Europe needs to stop burning fossil fuel and reduce its demand to extend the lifetime of all these resources, Joyce said.
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Advocacy Ad
 The European Energy Efficiency industry calls for a mandatory roadmap for each Member State to improve the energy performance of existing buildings under the forthcoming EU Energy Savings Framework Directive.
Published in The Parliament Magazine - Issue 325 - 4 April 2011- p.51
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 Time to wake a sleeping giant
Published in European Voice - 3 March 2011
If Europe is to hit its targets for energy efficiency, a great deal of work lies ahead.
[...] In the meantime, Amanda Afifi, secretary-general of EuroACE, representing companies involved in energy-saving goods and services, says she expects Europe's entire building stock to be low-energy by 2050.
She wants to triple Europe's current annual renovation rate of 1%, and to see each renovation improve efficiency by 80%, rather than today's average of 20%. “We need deep renovation rates, starting now,” she says.
But Afifi also lists three gaps that hinder the promotion of energy efficiency in today's industry: inadequacies in legislation, finance and training.
“Until there is a mandatory [energy-efficiency] target it's hard to know how to invest,” she says. EuroACE members and environmental campaigners have long called for the EU's 20% energy-efficiency target by 2020 to be made binding. But at a special energy summit in Brussels on 4 February, EU leaders announced that they would return to this issue only in 2013.
In the absence of a binding target, subsidies for efficiency stop and start with the rise and fall of national governments, which impairs investor confidence, says Afifi. Financing for renovations is a particular problem. EuroACE would like a mandatory 4% of structural funds to go to energy efficiency improvements in buildings. “We don't think you need handouts; what you need is upfront financing,” explains Afifi. [...]
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 Parliament battle lines drawn over energy targets
Published in EurActiv 02 March 2011
[...] Amanda Afifi, secretary-general of EuroAce, the European Alliance of Companies for Energy Efficiency in Buildings said that a binding target was needed because many member states did not have roadmaps for dealing with their existing building stock. "It would at least set the agenda and framework and force them to look at the issue," she said. "If they have a target to achieve, it will focus minds. It is important to start now because we have a goal of decarbonisation by 2050."
"With buildings representing 40% of Europe's energy consumption you have to renovate - to a deep level - a very high percentage of the building stock by 2050," she continued "and you won't be able to do that in the last ten years between 2040 and 2050. Even if you started now, you'd have to renovate five million buildings a year every year until 2050."
As well as the technical issues, training and financing issues were also involved, "so what we want is for the EU to set a binding overall target for the building sector and then for the member states to look at how they are going to meet it given their local, national and regional circumstances," she said.
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Advocacy Ad
European industry calls on all MEPs to support a mandatory roadmap for Member States to improve the energy performance of existing buildings under the Energy Efficiency Strategy Review.
Published in The Parliament Magazine - Issue 316 - 25 October 2010
Article
Buildings for the future
By Rick Wilberforce
President, EuroACE
Published in The Parliament Magazine - Issue 385 - 25 October 2010
Buildings use 40% of Europe’s energy and create 35% of its carbon emissions. Yet technologies are readily available to enable buildings to cut their energy use substantially. These truths lead to the inevitable conclusion that the EU simply has to focus on the building sector in order to meet its long-term energy and climate-change objectives. In fact, it will be impossible to meet our targets without making substantial improvements in the energy performance of the existing building stock.
And it’s not solely about meeting energy saving goals. Consider the other benefits of improving the energy efficiency of buildings. It assists in economic regeneration, by requiring less expenditure on fuel. It creates employment, from the increased number of jobs needed to install measures. It reduces fuel poverty, by enabling the poor to more easily heat their homes. It increases energy security, by reducing our demand for imported energy. It improves the quality of the environment, because buildings become more habitable, comfortable, attractive and easier to maintain.
The potential savings in energy are huge and are deliverable, economically. Using energy saving materials and technologies which are readily available now, most buildings could reduce their energy consumption to a fraction of current levels. And, because the value of the energy savings during the lifetime of these measures is likely to be greater than their installation cost, energy saving in buildings achieves a positive economic return; improving the energy efficiency of buildings is a carbon abatement measure at negative cost.
The recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive has been a helpful step forward. It will ensure that all new buildings are near-zero-energy by 2020. It will increase the number of buildings with Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). And it will ensure that buildings being renovated incorporate the most energy-efficient technologies. But it will do nothing to accelerate the rate of renovation.
Of Europe’s existing buildings, only about 1.2% are renovated and about 0.8% demolished in any given year. Even if all the buildings being renovated incorporated the highest standards of energy efficiency, this rate is insufficient to meet the EU’s energy saving targets for 2020.
Two important things need to happen if this situation is to be corrected. First, whenever building renovation takes place, all available energy saving technologies must be incorporated. This “deep” renovation can achieve a reduction in energy consumption of between 60% and 90%, for the majority of Europe’s buildings. Second, the annual rate of renovation of Europe’s buildings must be tripled before 2020. With an unwavering political commitment over this timescale, the energy efficiency industry can deliver.
With the Energy Efficiency Strategy review and Strategic Energy review currently being undertaken, now is the time to demonstrate this commitment and to incorporate objectives and instruments which will help realise the potential. One measure must be to set binding targets for the deep, energy-efficient, refurbishment of Europe’s buildings.
Targets however have to be quantifiable and progress must be measurable, otherwise they are meaningless. Fortunately, with the advent of EPCs, which rate the performance of buildings on an A to G scale, we have such a tool. The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive will ensure that eventually virtually every building in the EU will have an EPC. The Commission should require Member States to track these centrally, from which point it would be a straightforward matter to set targets (eg for the proportion of buildings to achieve specific EPC ratings), and to monitor progress.
In its forthcoming energy reviews, the Commission must propose such renovation targets, using EPCs or some other measurable means, if we are to achieve the imperative:- to renovate Europe!
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 Energy efficiency: The EU's new action plan
Published in EurActiv - 1 September 2010
[...] EuroACE, the European Alliance of Companies for Energy Efficiency in Buildings, argued that a revision of the Energy End-Use Efficiency and Energy Services Directive (ESD) should introduce binding national targets for energy savings in buildings as well as a mandatory target to increase the renovation rate.
"The mandatory approach has clearly been more effective for meeting the carbon reduction and renewable energy targets and, without a clear and measurable target for reducing the demand for energy use in buildings, Europe risks falling far short of its efficiency goal," the association said. EuroACE pointed out that a binding target for energy savings in buildings is easier to calculate and administer than an overall primary energy savings target. It added that the rate of renovation will have to increase by a factor of two or three from the current rate of 1.2% to 1.4% by 2020 for Europe to meet its goals.
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Article
 EU must practice before it preaches
by Rick Wilberforce
President, EuroACE
Published in Europe's World - Issue 13 - Autumn 2009
The challenges of the 21st century with globalization, the growing influence of the World Wide Web, and accelerated climate change call industries, governments and executives all over the world for action. Logistics will be a genuine trendsetter for the economy of the future and could help the EU to recover faster from the crisis. Will the EU keep up with this challenge?
The majority of political, regulatory and legislative stakeholders still see logistics in the limited sense of goods transport, warehousing and special process solutions, rather than recognizing the macro-economic relationships. European policymaking does not yet provide the regulatory incentives to leverage the sector’s potential by completing the Internal market for road cabotage or rail freight or tackling road congestion by nondiscriminatory measures for all users of roads and not just for trucks like the proposed.This despite the fact that the logistics sector was the biggest in the EU in 2008 in terms of revenue, generating 950 billion euro – far ahead of the automotive and chemical industries. Logistics fulfills already a vital backbone function in supporting macroeconomic processes and the operation of markets, critical infrastructures and provision to consumers. Moreover, logistics companies will be the trendsetter for the economy.
Why? Let´s look at our Delphi study “Delivering tomorrow – Customer Needs in 2020 and Beyond”. It shows that issues such as sustainability, education and social responsibility will gain in importance. In the years to come, purchasing decisions will no longer be based solely on brand, quality and price. The environmental impact of products and services will play a major role. The demand of customers for “green” solutions calls the logistics industry for action. And the political decision-makers! The Delphi study predicts that companies will have to collaborate more often and more closely than ever before – beyond European or worldwide borders. But policies and regulations need to be adapted by adequate decision-making taking out unnecessary complexity. And the logistics industry as one of the major service providers for many industries will be the model that others follow. At its core, logistics is not environmental friendly and is at a high cost of energy. But it will be the key sector for driving green solutions in the future. Therefore the global logistics providers will invest more resources than ever before into establishing and operating shared networks and into “green” solutions.
In addition, logistics has long been a hightech industry, with important developments like RFID, GPS, satellite navigation or in turn driving eCommerce. In just a few years, the next generation of the Internet will lead to completely new business models and industrial processes. Not only will completely new global players emerge, but logistics companies will also be able to provide all or parts of more complex production, delivery and service processes than ever. The current financial and economic crisis will only accelerate this trend, with consolidation in all industries and increased outsourcing because of the intense pressure on companies to reduce costs. It is in this light that the competitiveness of the entire European industry is increasingly dependent on logistics. This will require a fresh, holistic view from European regulators and politicians how to treat the sector.
Advocacy Ad
A message to all EP ITRE COMMITTEE Members on the Recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD)
Published in The Parliament Magazine - Issue 289 - 30 March 2009
Interview
 Industry: Long-term policy key to low-energy buildings
Susanne Dyrböl
EuroACE Board Member
Published in EurActiv - 18 February 2009
Several European countries are formulating long-term policy frameworks to ensure that the construction sector can invest securely in low-energy buildings, despite weak EU requirements, a board member at industry group EuroACE told EurActiv in an interview.
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 Commission unveils new energy-saving measures
Published in EurActiv - 18 November 2008
[...] The European Alliance of Companies for Energy Efficiency in Buildings (EuroACE) welcomed the expected creation of 450,000 new jobs directly via the installation of energy saving measures in buildings, many of them semi-skilled and in local SMEs. It called on the Council and the European Parliament to adopt the proposal "faster than the 13 months that the original Energy Performance of Buildings Directive took from initial proposal to full legal agreement in 2001/2".
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