Dec. 7, 2017

Data CollectionNews from the EU

This report sums up the work done in the scope of the Building Stock Observatory project.

According to the report, good governance and policy making require monitoring and periodic evaluations of the impact of building policies and strategies. In 2016, most EU legislation on buildings, including the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and the Renewable Energy Sources Directive (RED), are undergoing a review process. With this in mind, the European Commission decided to establish the European Union (EU) Building Stock Observatory to monitor buildings’ energy performance improvement and its impact on the actual energy consumption of the sector in the EU Member States.

The EU Building Stock Observatory was developed by a consortium consisting of BPIE, ECN, Enerdata, Ecofys and SEVEn in cooperation with 20 national partners and a broad range of stakeholders. The key objective was to provide the European Commission with a comprehensive knowledge resource on Europe’s building stock for policy makers, investors, industry stakeholders, energy utilities, local and national authorities as well as researchers, in order to underpin decision-making, financial and long-term strategic support. The purpose of the project was to:

• Establish a methodological framework for the monitoring of the EU-28 building stock in the context of building energy efficiency policies; including a set of quantitative indicators, guidance for data collection and analysis; as well as strategies to address data gaps;
• Collect buildings’ statistics in EU-28 and provide a snapshot of the current status of the European building stock’s energy performance;
• Disseminate the results through a dedicated publicly available portal;
• Set up a methodology for the continuous monitoring of the building stock and maintain the website as well as other communication tools.