Changes from plenary report to adopted text

1. Member States shall ensure that the total final energy consumption of all public bodies combined is reduced by at least 2 % each year, when compared to the year X-2 (with X as the year when this Directive enters into force).

Member States may take into account climatic variations within the Member State when calculating their public bodies’ final energy consumption.

2. Member States shall include, in their national energy and climate plans and updates thereof pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2018/1999, the list of all public bodies which shall contribute to the fulfilment of the obligation set out in paragraph 1 of this Article, the amount of energy consumption reduction and energy savings to be achieved by each of them and the measures they plan to achieve it. As part of their integrated national energy and climate reports pursuant to Article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1999, Member States shall report to the Commission the final energy consumption reduction achieved annually.

3. Member States shall ensure that regional and local authorities, establish specific energy efficiency measures in their decarbonisation plans after consulting relevant stakeholders, their energy agencies, where relevant, and the public, including the particular groups at risk of energy poverty or more susceptible to its effects on the basis of their income, gender, demographics, health condition or membership of a minority group, such as ▌persons with a minority racial or ethnic background. Member States shall also ensure that, when designing and implementing energy efficiency measures, regional and local authorities avoid negative direct or indirect impacts of the energy efficiency measures on energy poor, low-income households or vulnerable groups.

4. Member States shall provide financial and technical support to public bodies in the uptake of energy efficiency improvement measures and encourage them to take into account the wider benefits beyond energy savings, such as the quality of the indoor air and environment as well as an improvement of people’s quality of life and the comfort of renovated public buildings, in particular schools, day care centres, nursing homes, sheltered housing, hospitals, and social housing, including at regional and local levels. Member States shall provide guidelines, promote competence building and training opportunities, including on energy refurbishment by using Energy Performance Contracts and public private partnerships and encourage cooperation amongst public bodies. Members States shall support public bodies to address the lack of human resources, which are needed at all stages of the green transition, including craftspeople as well as high-skilled green technology experts, applied scientists and innovators.

5. Member States shall encourage public bodies to consider life cycle carbon emissions as well as economic, social and energy security benefits of their public bodies’ investment and policy activities and shall provide specific guidance in that regard.

5a. Member States shall encourage public bodies to take adequate measures to address the heating dimension of buildings owned or occupied by public bodies, in particular via the replacement of old and inefficient heaters and phase out of fossil fuels.

5b. Member States shall promote the use of public transport and other less polluting and more energy efficient means of mobility, such as rail, cycling, walking or shared mobility, by renewing and decarbonising fleets, encouraging a modal shift and including those modes in urban mobility planning.

Exemplary role of public bodies’ buildings

1. Without prejudice to Article 7 of Directive 2010/31/EU ▌, each Member State shall ensure that at least 3 % of the total floor area of heated and/or cooled buildings owned by public bodies of the following categories and of buildings for social purposes is renovated each year to at least be transformed into nearly zero-energy buildings or zero-emission buildings in accordance with Article 9 of Directive 2010/31/EU with due consideration of cost-effectiveness and technical feasibility:

(a) buildings owned by public bodies;

(b) buildings newly occupied by public bodies, from ... [the date of entry into force of this Directive];

(c) buildings occupied by public bodies when reaching a trigger point (renewal of rental, sale, change of use, significant repair or maintenance work).

Member States may exempt social housing from the obligation to renovate referred to in the first subparagraph where such renovations would not be cost neutral or would lead to rent increases for people living in social housing that cannot be limited to the equivalent of the economic savings on the energy bill in any way.

Where public bodies occupy a building that they do not own, they shall exercise their contractual rights to the extent possible and encourage the building owner to renovate the building to a nearly zero-energy building in accordance with Article 9 of Directive 2010/31/EU or implement an energy management system or energy performance contract to maintain and improve the energy performance over time. When concluding a new contract for occupying a building they do not own, public bodies shall ensure that the building falls into the top two energy efficiency classes on the energy performance certificate or establish contractual clauses that commit the building owner to renovate the building to a nearly zero-energy building before it is occupied by the public body.

The rate of at least 3% shall be calculated on the total floor area of buildings having a total useful floor area over 250 m2 owned by public bodies ▌and of buildings for social purposes which, on 1 January 2024, are not nearly zero-energy buildings.

Member States may lay down requirements to ensure that, where technically and economically feasible, buildings owned or occupied by public bodies as referred to in the first and third subparagraphs of this paragraph and buildings for social purposes over 250 m2 are equipped with building automation and control systems or other solutions to actively manage energy flows, in accordance with Article 14(4) of Directive 2010/31/EU.

1a. By way of derogation from paragraph 1, Member States may apply less stringent requirements establishing different energy efficiency requirements for the following categories of buildings:

(a) buildings officially protected as part of a designated environment, or because of their special architectural or historical merit, in so far as compliance with certain minimum energy performance requirements would alter their character or appearance unacceptably;

(b) buildings owned by the armed forces or central government and serving national defence purposes, apart from single living quarters or office buildings for the armed forces and other staff employed by national defence authorities;

(c) buildings used as places of worship and for religious activities.

1b. In order to front load energy savings and to provide an incentive for early action, a Member State that renovates more than 3 % of the total floor area of its buildings in accordance with paragraph 1 in any year until 31 December 2026 may count the surplus towards the annual renovation rate of any of the following three years. A Member State that renovates more than 3 % of the total floor area of its buildings from 1 January 2027 may count the surplus towards the annual renovation rate of the following two years.

2. In exceptional cases, Member States may count towards the annual renovation rate of buildings new buildings owned as replacements for specific public bodies’ buildings demolished in any of the two previous years. Such exceptions shall only apply where they would be more cost effective and sustainable in terms of the energy and lifecycle CO2 emissions achieved compared to the renovations of such buildings. The general criteria, methodologies and procedures to identify such exceptional cases shall be clearly set out and published by each Member State.

Where such inventories already exist at local or regional levels, each Member State shall take appropriate measures to facilitate the data collection and processing activities related to its inventory. The inventory shall also enable private actors including ESCOs to take part in renovation solutions. Data about building stock characteristics, building shell performance, technical buildings systems, buildings renovation and energy performance may be aggregated by the EU Building Stock Observatory to ensure a better understanding of the energy performance of the building sector through comparable data.

The inventory shall contain at least the following data:

(a) the floor area in m2;

(ab) the annual energy consumption of heat, cooling, electricity and hot water when those data are available;

Public procurement

1. Member States shall ensure that contracting authorities and contracting entities, when concluding public contracts and concessions with a value equal to or greater than the thresholds laid down in Article 8 of Directive 2014/23/EU, Article 4 of Directive 2014/24/EU and Article 15 of Directive 2014/25/EU, purchase only products, services, buildings and works with high energy-efficiency performance, duly taking into account the efficient management of financial resources, in accordance with the requirements referred to in Annex IV to this Directive.

Member States shall also ensure that in concluding the public contracts and concessions with a value equal to or greater than the thresholds referred to in the first subparagraph, contracting authorities and contracting entities, apply the energy efficiency first principle referred to in Article 3 of this Directive, including for those public contracts and concessions for which no specific requirements are provided in Annex IV.

2. The obligation referred to in paragraph 1 shall apply to the contracts of the armed forces only to the extent that its application does not cause any conflict with the nature and primary aim of the activities of the armed forces. The obligation shall not apply to contracts for the supply of military equipment as defined by Directive 2009/81/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council .

3. Notwithstanding paragraph 4 of Article 26 of this Directive, Member States shall ensure that contracting authorities and contracting entities assess the feasibility of concluding long-term energy performance contracts that provide long-term energy savings when procuring service contracts with significant energy content.

4. Without prejudice to paragraph 1, when purchasing a product package fully covered by a delegated act adopted under Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 of the European Parliament and of the Council , Member States may require that the aggregate energy efficiency take priority over the energy efficiency of individual products within that package, by purchasing the product package that complies with the criterion of belonging to the highest available energy efficiency class.

5. Member States shall require that contracting authorities and contracting entities take into account, where appropriate, wider sustainability, social, environmental and circular economy aspects in procurement practices, in particular for the transport sector, with a view to achieving the Union’s decarbonisation and zero pollution objectives. Where appropriate, and in accordance with the requirements laid down in Annex IV, Member States shall require contracting authorities and contracting entities to take into account Union green public procurement criteria.

To ensure transparency in the application of energy efficiency requirements in the procurement process, Member States shall make publicly available information on the energy efficiency impact of contracts with a value equal to or greater than the thresholds referred to in paragraph 1. Contracting authorities shall require that tenderers disclose information on the life cycle global warming potential of a new building and a building to be renovated, including the use of low carbon materials and the circularity of the materials used, and shall make that information publically available for the contracts, in particular for new buildings having a floor area larger than 2000 square meters.

Member States shall support contracting authorities and contracting entities in the uptake of energy efficiency requirements, including at regional and local level, by providing clear rules and guidelines including methodologies on the assessment of lifecycle costs and environment impacts and costs, setting up competence support centres, encouraging cooperation amongst contracting authorities including across borders and using aggregated procurement and digital procurement where possible.

5a. Where appropriate, the Commission may provide further guidance and tools to national authorities and procurement officials in the application of energy efficiency requirements in the procurement process. Such support may strengthen existing supporting fora (e.g. concerted action) for Member States and assist them in taking the green public procurement criteria into account.

6. Member States shall establish legal and regulatory provisions, and administrative practices, regarding public purchasing and annual budgeting and accounting, necessary to ensure that individual contracting authorities are not deterred from making investments in improving energy efficiency and from using energy performance contracting and third-party financing mechanisms on a long-term contractual basis.

7. Member States shall remove any regulatory or non-regulatory barriers to energy efficiency, in particular as regards legal and regulatory provisions, and administrative practices, regarding public purchasing and annual budgeting and accounting, with a view to ensuring that individual public bodies are not deterred from making investments in improving energy efficiency and from using energy performance contracting and third-party financing mechanisms on a long-term contractual basis.

Member States shall report to the Commission on the measures taken to address the barriers to uptake of energy efficiency improvements as part of the integrated national energy and climate progress reports pursuant to Article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1999.

Energy savings obligation

-1. With a view to ensuring a stable and predictable contribution towards achieving the Union's energy and climate targets for 2030 and the climate neutrality objective for 2050, Member States shall achieve cumulative end-use energy savings in the obligation periods. The first obligation period, which is referred to in paragraph 1, point (a), was from 2014 to 2020. The second obligation period, which is referred to in paragraph 1, points (b) and (c), shall run from 2021 to 2030.

1. Member States shall achieve cumulative end-use energy savings at least equivalent to:

(a) new savings each year from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2020 of 1,5 % of annual energy sales to final customers by volume, averaged over the most recent three-year period prior to 1 January 2013. Sales of energy, by volume, used in transport may be excluded, in whole or in part, from that calculation;

(b) new savings each year from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2023 of 0,8 % of annual final energy consumption, averaged over the most recent three-year period prior to 1 January 2019. By way of derogation from that requirement, Cyprus and Malta shall achieve new savings each year from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2023 equivalent to 0,24 % of annual final energy consumption, averaged over the most recent three-year period prior to 1 January 2019;

(c) new savings each year from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2030 of 2 % of annual final energy consumption, averaged over the three-year period prior to 1 January 2020.

Member States shall decide how to phase the calculated quantity of new savings over each period referred to in points (a), (b) and (c) of the first subparagraph, provided that the required total cumulative end-use energy savings have been achieved by the end of each obligation period.

Member States shall continue to achieve new annual savings in accordance with the savings rate provided in point (c) of the first subparagraph for ten-year periods after 2030.

2. Member States shall achieve the amount of energy savings required under paragraph 1 of this Article either by establishing an energy efficiency obligation scheme referred to in Article 9 or by adopting alternative policy measures referred to in Article 10. Member States may combine an energy efficiency obligation scheme with alternative policy measures. Member States shall ensure that energy savings resulting from policy measures referred to in Articles 9 and 10 and Article 28(11) are calculated in accordance with Annex V.