The climate impact of buildings is too high, according to BPIE

The EU Buildings Climate Tracker developed by BPIE finds that the EU is facing a growing gap in advancing towards climate neutrality in the sector. A close examination of EU focus geographies shines a spotlight on wide-ranging discrepancies between EU countries’ performance standards for new buildings, both in terms of consistency regarding the definition of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (‘NZEBs’) as laid out in the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), and in terms of overall ambition levels. Building decarbonisation is off track and much behind the path to climate neutrality by 2050. While the index should have been at 14 points in 2019, it is barely above 0, thus at almost the same level in 2019 as in 2015. According to BPIE “four years of potential progress towards climate neutrality by 2050 have been lost.”