10/11/21

Europe’s energy efficiency challenge: the long term renovation of the national building stock

Sustainability and taking care of the environment are rising concerns, and people have realized these are not passing trends, but real concerns that must be taken into account now, in the present time. Beyond recycling, plastic elimination, or the need to reduce production and meat consumption, there are many more actions to be taken, in many areas and levels.

Precisely from a real estate perspective, the challenge to construct following this new type of environmentally sustainable model of traditional housing has already been implemented during several years, giving way to new homes that improve people’s quality of life and respect the environment.

While new residential promotions are already designed taking into account structures and materials that adhere to this objective, now it is urgent to take actions in buildings and housing that are obsolete regarding energy efficiency.

“From FORVI, Forcadell’s technical office, we are constantly seeing plenty of public and/or private buildings that require improvement actions that have not been implemented for different reasons”, affirms Bàrbara Veciana, FORVI’s Director. This situation stems mainly from the cost of rehabilitation works on the city’s older building park. The grants to subsidize rehabilitation and improvement for these buildings are often given out periodically by public administrations and are very important. “These subsidies are mainly given to Community of Properties, and from FORVI we manage them for our clients, taking care of formalities and paperwork as well as the planning and the project execution”, adds Bàrbara Veciana.

Improvement of energy efficiency for the European building stock has now new funds, included in the well-known NextGen EU Funds. In Spain, these are known as “Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resilencia”  and managed by the Spanish State, which will distribute them to the local Communities.

With these funds, the aim is to reduce the use of non – renewable energy, as well as the demand for heating systems and A/C, destined to end-users as well as to public and private property owners of buildings in the process of rehabilitation. For private owners, the rehabilitations are concentrated specifically for renovation of windows and its latches, with a maximum expenditure for each dwelling of €3,000. In these cases there will not be a need to present a previous plan, just a demand for the subsidy and supply the corresponding invoices.

On the other hand, subsidies for rehabilitation of residential buildings will require presenting a previous plan and providing a current ITE report (Inspección Técnica de Edificios). “Most actions taken in rehabilitating residential buildings will focus in renovation of facades and roofing, to help reduce CO2 emissions, and improvements for accessibility (example: renovation of entrance hall). It is also important to highlight that if the property owner decides to implement  general security measures and / or take down the asbestos left in the building, these renovations can also be included in the plan to receive the subsidy”, as FORVI’s Bàrbara Veciana informs.

FORVI has the expertise in building rehabilitation, housing renovations, ITE reports, certificates of habitation, project and construction management. If you are interested in knowing more details and want to receive personal advice, contact the technical office.

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