ENERGY EFFICIENT RENOVATION OF DWELLINGS:LESSONS LEARNED

An analysis of the energy consumption of the built environment in Europe shows that themain challenge to achieve substantial energy reductions in this sector lies in improving theenergy efficiency of the existing stock rather than in designing and building energy efficientnew dwellings. This challenge is especially pungent when taking into account the buildingstock of former Eastern European countries, where energy efficiency was never a greatissue and where investments in energy efficiency are difficult to find.This is area where the EU - funded project Demohouse is focusing on. In this project,partners from Austria, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain are workingtogether to develop, implement and demonstrate solutions to reduce the heating demandby at least 30% compared to present business as usual renovations. The advantage ofthe European dimension of the project is that participating countries learn through sharingtheir experience and solutions.