Römpczyk______Energy Efficiency in Housing___2009
Introduction
The process shows: there is more light at the end of the tunnel
This publication is outcome of Third Baltic Energy Dialogue on Energy Efficiency in Housing, organized as an international conference in May 2008 in Tallinn. The First Dialogue was a critical assessment of nuclear energy in the Baltic region, focusing on Ignalina and its implications. International experts and politicians had been invited in December 2006 to Riga. The Second Dialogue debated the other extreme, namely the potentials of Bioenergies for the Baltic Sea Region and was held in Tallinn in May 2007. The most illustrative contributions and reflections of the first two Dialogues were published u8nder the title “…” by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Tallinn.
Of thisThird Dialogue on Energy Efficiency the organizers were Tallinn City Government – Department of Environment -, EU project SECURE and Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Baltic States. Because of the even more pragmatic and constructive character of the event we decided to also publish the various international lessons learnt to solve the ever more urging scourge of the Baltic citizens: Energy Efficiency in Housing.
The objectives of this publication are none the less multi-fold: to rise awareness, to share experiences, to establish a network and to promote the implementation of solutions in Energy Efficiency in Housing in context, that means:
a)To rise the awareness of civil society, business community, local and central governmental institutions on energy saving and efficiency in housing sector;
b)To share the national and international experiences on energy saving and efficiency;
c)To enhance the cooperation and participation of stakeholders (local and state government, business community and civil society) on promotion of the energy saving;
d)To ensure sustainability in energy saving policy making and implementation in housing.
The topics discussed in this publication are around (1) identification of gaps and needs in policy instruments, public-civic cooperation, legal regulations (e.g. fiscal tax reform) and monitoring; (2) good and bad lessons learnt to ensure sustainable demand and supply of power and heating and cooling and housing; (3) what lessons are learned from energy-mix
policies and descentralized energy transformation; and (4) funding and return of particular energy saving concepts.
Civil servants of local, county and national governmental institutions on energy, city development, city planning, building and renovation departments, also experts of development agencies, civil society organizations, NGOs, unions, Home Owners Associations (HOA), business community, architects, real estate developers, builders from Baltic Sea Region are the target group of this book.
Changing mentality plus modern technology are the key factors
Energy efficiency might sound something like typical to stingy and mean person. In fact it isn't, energy efficiency and saving has economical, social and environmental dimension. Energy efficiency can be explored as new direction of economy for companies which provide design and technological solutions for energy saving and efficiency. From personal perspective its economic dimension means having same or better in-door comfort with paying less for this.
With German cooperation they renovated a typical 30 year old multi-storey bloc in Riga, using state of the art technologies in isolation and low energy housing only to reduce the heating losses by 60%! No longer spilling energy means definitely keeping more money in one´s own pocket instead of paying unjustified high invoices.[1]
As the social dimension energy saving means reducing stress on the climate which also affects us and will affect more drastic the environmental conditions of our children. Efficient heating systems save green house gas emissions up to 40%. Another important social lesson from the Dialogue was networking and more communication and making agreements between inhabitants of multi-storey buildings helps as lubricant to make technical innovations really productive. Environmental aspect of energy saving is keeping environment clean via using less fossil fuels, and thus Cooperation among dwellers accelerates not only reduction of CO2 and sulfuric gases, but opens the way to using more renewable energy sources for heating and power and also to introduce ecological building materials. In cooperation with the local authorities, the more aware citizens will insist later on short distance access to public transport, only to consume much less of the precious petroleum and natural gas imported at high cost from abroad.
International lessons learnt are at hand
All around the Baltic Sea real changes in practice are very hard to take place. Why it is so
difficult to implement the changes in energy use in building and construction sector? The answers given during the long and intensive debates showed that every change in society is kind of social innovation, which speed and success depends at least from 5 factors. If one of those factors is weak or missing, the change in society will not take place or will be extremely delayed. The key-factors – absolute preconditions for change
in society – are seen as:
(1) motivation (based on values and world-view);
(2) know-how on what are the causes of the problems and what are the solutions
to remove the causes and not to waste resources for removing consequences,
while causes remain unsolved;
(3) resources in terms of fiscal and technological to implement the solutions, both mental and technical one;
(4) institutions or enabling environment, which means enforced adequate legislation, proper and working system for incentives for energy saving, trustful experts and trained architects, civil servants and home owners; and
(5) commitment and faith of opinion leaders, politicians, experts, media-persons, academicians, civil servants and ordinary people towards understanding that energy efficiency and saving is responsibility of every citizens in each of our towns and so of planet Earth.
We are convinced, that the multifold experiences of the international dialogue-partners which we organized for this book will create new thoughts and ideas, motivation and know-how, commitment and faith on energy efficiency and saving to all readers – because we all know it is high time for change and for efficient use of energy in our buildings!
Ahto Oja and Elmar Römpczyk, editors
Tallinn/Bonn, January 2009
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[1] IEMB (Institut für Erhaltung und Modernisierung von Bauwerken e.V. an der TU Berlin): Energie Initiative Riga – ein Kooperationsprojekt der Städte Berlin und Riga zur energetischen Sanierung von Wohngebäuden, 2005, S.6 (s.also