Source: Energy & Management Powernews, January 13, 2022
To advance climate protection in the building sector, the Tüv association demands additional efforts. For example, the revision of the energy certificate of buildings.
Residential buildings and commercial properties cause about a third of greenhouse gas emissions in Germany. Here, the Federation of Technical Inspection Associations sees an "enormous potential to save energy in the future." Reducing the energy requirements of buildings not only benefits the climate, but is also in the interest of companies and consumers. These benefit from lower operating costs.
Juliane Petrich, policy and sustainability officer at the Tüv Association, considers independent testing organizations as well as energy audits, tests of building technology or certifications of building materials to be important building blocks for a sustainable transformation of the building sector.
The association sees the revision of energy certificates for buildings as an important adjusting screw for decarbonizing the sector. "The currently existing energy certificates hardly provide any reliable information about the actual energy status of a building," Petrich criticizes. Neither there are area-wide controls of the documents nor defaults for the energetic reorganization of the buildings. Petrich: "The energy certificate is a paper tiger with marginal steering effect for climate protection."
In the view of the Tüv association, effective instruments already exist with the energy audit according to DIN EN 16427 and the energy management system according to DIN EN ISO/IEC 50001 to determine the energy balance of a building and to propose concrete improvements. Petrich demands: "The authorities should control whether the buildings fulfill the legal requirements and measures for the lowering of the greenhouse gas output are converted."
Not only with the car regularly to the Tüv
There must be clear defaults, in which cases by the owners of house energetically must be reorganized. Petrich emphasizes that energy audits have already proven themselves well in the commercial sector and can also be applied to private buildings. Depending on the type of building, energy audits could be carried out once (one- and two-family houses) or every four years (multi-family houses).
Building a central building list
The association calls for subsidies to be linked to a building's carbon footprint as determined by energy audits. It also says the inclusion of digital technologies should play a greater role. For example, the increasing use of intelligent building technology could help to significantly reduce a building's CO2 emissions. The association calls for a digital platform to be used to centrally manage a list of buildings from an energy perspective. The energy values for demand and consumption as well as the current CO2 balance of the buildings should also be documented. The necessary renovation measures and their implementation should also be included in such a register.
The Tüv Association has set out its demands to the new German government in its position paper "2045 greenhouse gas neutral - With sustainable buildings together to the goal". It makes the paper available for download on its website.
Author: Davina Spohn