Changes from plenary report to adopted text

(49) In order to ensure that the energy performance of buildings can be taken into account by prospective buyers or tenants early in the process, buildings or building units which are offered for sale or rent should have an energy performance certificate, and the energy performance class and indicator should be stated in all advertisements. The prospective buyer or tenant of a building or building unit should, in the energy performance certificate, be given correct information about the energy performance of the building and practical advice on improving such performance. The energy performance certificate should also provide information on its primary energy and final consumption, on its energy needs, on its renewable energy production on its greenhouse gas emissions, on its indoor environmental quality, as well as recommendations for the improvement of the energy performance and the life-cycle GWP.

(49a) When considering support policies for minimum energy performance standards, special attention should be given to vulnerable households, particularly to those whose security of tenure might be put at risk or those exposed to high energy costs that lack the means to renovate the building they occupy. Member States should provide safeguards at national level, such as social support mechanisms.

(49b) The energy transition represents an opportunity to improve access to better quality housing, provided that renovation costs are balanced as much as possible with energy savings and security of tenure is ensured. It can also help lift households out of energy and transport poverty if subsidies and public funding are made available to those with reduced access to market-price loans. Also, for public housing and rented buildings, participative models are essential for tenants to work together with the housing companies, landlords and owners associations on the scope and cost of renovations. It can help balancing costs and reinforce security of tenure. Capacity-building opportunities for local housing providers should be created for better uptake of participative models and a more coordinated approach across sectors at national, regional and local level.

(50) The monitoring of the building stock is facilitated by the availability of data collected by digital tools, thereby reducing administrative costs. Therefore, national databases for energy performance of buildings should be set up, and the information contained therein should be transferred to the EU Building Stock Observatory.

(51) Buildings occupied by public authorities and buildings frequently visited by the public should set an example by showing that environmental and energy considerations are being taken into account and therefore those buildings should be subject to energy certification on a regular basis. The dissemination to the public of information on energy performance should be enhanced by clearly displaying those energy performance certificates, in particular in buildings of a certain size which are occupied by public authorities or which are frequently visited by the public, such as town halls, schools, shops and shopping centres, supermarkets, restaurants, theatres, banks and hotels.

(51a) The Commission should establish technical guidelines for the renovation of historical heritage buildings and historic centres to ensure that ecological ambitions are met and cultural heritage is safeguarded. The establishment of national renovation plans must provide for the structured and permanent consultation of the representative organisations of the subjects operating in the construction sector, including with regard to historic buildings.

(51b) Existing exemptions for heritage and temporary buildings should be maintained for conservation and heritage buildings while new innovative solutions are developed and tested. An exemption should also be provided for heritage buildings that are in the process of becoming officially protected as well as other buildings requiring due conservation as part of a designated environment or because of their special architectural and historic merit, if that process started before the entry into force of this Directive. Technical assistance is essential to boosting the renovation of public buildings, including financial support for replication and upscaling of pilots and demonstration projects, building on experiences developed with Horizon 2020 funding for smart cities. Member States should review their current national processes to class buildings as heritage and historic buildings to allow granting such status in a timely manner by the date of transposition of this Directive.

(52) Recent years have seen a rise in the number of air-conditioning systems in European countries. That creates considerable problems at peak load times, increasing the cost of electricity and disrupting the energy balance. Priority should be given to strategies which enhance the thermal performance of buildings during the summer period. To that end, there should be focus on measures which avoid overheating, such as shading and sufficient thermal capacity in the building construction, and further development and application of passive cooling techniques, primarily those that improve indoor environment conditions and the micro-climate around buildings.

(53) Regular maintenance and inspection of heating, electrical installations, fire extinction, ventilation and air-conditioning systems by qualified personnel contributes to maintaining their correct adjustment in accordance with the product specification and in that way ensures optimal performance from an environmental, safety and energy point of view. An independent assessment of the entire heating, electrical installations, fire extinction, ventilation and air-conditioning system should occur at regular intervals during its lifecycle in particular before its replacement or upgrading. In order to minimise the administrative burden on building owners and tenants, Member States should endeavour to combine inspections and certifications as far as possible.

(54) A common approach to the energy performance certification of buildings, renovation passports, smart readiness indicators and the inspection of heating ventilation, air-conditioning systems, electrical installations and air-conditioning systems, carried out by qualified or certified experts, whose independence is to be guaranteed on the basis of objective criteria, contribute to a level playing field as regards efforts made in Member States to energy saving in the buildings sector and will introduce transparency for prospective owners or users with regard to energy performance in the Union property market. In order to ensure the quality of energy performance certificates, renovation passports, smart readiness indicators and of the inspection of the thermal characteristics of the building heating and air-conditioning and controls systems throughout the Union, an independent control mechanism should be established in each Member State.

(55) Since local and regional authorities are critical for the successful implementation of this Directive, they should be consulted and involved, as and when appropriate in accordance with applicable national legislation, on planning issues, the development of programmes to provide information, training and awareness-raising, and on the implementation of this Directive at national or regional level. Such consultations may also serve to promote the provision of adequate guidance to local planners and building inspectors to carry out the necessary tasks. Furthermore, Member States should enable and encourage architects and planners to properly consider the optimal combination of improvements in energy efficiency, use of energy from renewable sources and use of district heating and cooling when planning, designing, building and renovating industrial or residential areas including via use of 3D based modelling and simulation technologies. In addition, the public consultation on the national building renovation plans should involve other socio-economic partners socio-economic partners including trade unions and housing cooperatives, building owners, landowners and construction industry, entities working with vulnerable households and homeless people, and other civil society partners such as tenants organisations and consumer organisations and establish multi-level dialogues.

(56) Installers and builders are critical for the successful implementation of this Directive. Therefore, an adequate number of installers and builders should, through training and other measures, have the appropriate level of competence for the installation and integration of the energy efficient and renewable energy technology required.

(57) In order to further the aim of improving the energy performance of buildings, the power to adopt acts in accordance with Article 290 TFEU should be delegated to the Commission in respect of the adaptation to technical progress of certain parts of the general framework set out in Annex I by 31 December 2026, in respect of the details related to the establishment of a methodology framework for calculating cost-optimal levels of minimum energy performance requirements, in respect of the adaptation of the thresholds for zero-emission buildings and the calculation methodology for life-cycle GWP, in respect of minimum indoor environmental quality standards, in respect of the establishment of a common European framework for renovation passports and in respect of a Union scheme for rating the smart readiness of buildings. It is of particular importance that the Commission carry out appropriate consultations during its preparatory work, including at expert level, and that those consultations be conducted in accordance with the principles laid down in the Interinstitutional Agreement of 13 April 2016 on Better Law-Making. In particular, to ensure equal participation in the preparation of delegated acts, the European Parliament and the Council receive all documents at the same time as Member States’ experts, and their experts systematically have access to meetings of Commission expert groups dealing with the preparation of delegated acts.

(58) In order to ensure an effective implementation of the provisions laid down in this Directive, the Commission supports Member States through various tools, such as the Technical Support Instrument providing tailor-made technical expertise to design and implement reforms, including those aimed at increasing the annual energy renovation rate of residential and non-residential buildings by 2030 and to foster deep energy renovations. The technical support relates to, for example, strengthening of administrative capacity, supporting policy development and implementation, and sharing of relevant best practices.

(59) Since the objectives of this Directive, namely enhancing the energy performance of buildings and reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, due to the complexity of the buildings sector and the inability of the national housing markets to adequately address the challenges of energy efficiency, but can rather, by reason of the scale and the effects of the action, be better achieved at Union level, the Union may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union. In accordance with the principle of proportionality as set out in that Article, this Directive does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve those objectives.

(60) The legal basis of this initiative is Article 194(2) TFEU, which empowers the Union to establish the measures necessary to achieve the objectives of the Union with regard to policy on energy. The proposal contributes to the Union’s energy policy objectives as outlined in Article 194(1) TFEU, in particular improving the energy performance of buildings and reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, which contributes to preserve and improve the environment.

(61) In accordance with point 44 of the Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Law-Making, Member States should draw up, for themselves and in the interest of the Union, their own tables, illustrating, as far as possible, the correlation between this Directive and the transposition measures, and make them public. In accordance with the Joint Political Declaration of 28 September 2011 of Member States and the Commission on explanatory documents, Member States have undertaken to accompany, in justified cases, the notification of their transposition measures with one or more documents explaining the relationship between the components of a directive and the corresponding parts of national transposition instruments. With regard to this Directive, the legislator considers the transmission of such documents to be justified, in particular following the judgment of the European Court of Justice in Case Commission vs Belgium (case C-543/17).

(62) The obligation to transpose this Directive into national law should be confined to those provisions which represent a substantive amendment as compared to the earlier Directive. The obligation to transpose the provisions which are unchanged arises under the earlier Directive.

(63) This Directive should be without prejudice to the obligations of the Member States relating to the time-limits for the transposition into national law and the dates of application of the Directives set out in Annex VIII, Part B,

HAVE ADOPTED THIS DIRECTIVE:

Subject matter

1. This Directive promotes the improvement of the energy performance of buildings and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from buildings within the Union, with a view to achieving a zero-emission building stock by 2050, taking into account the outdoor climatic conditions, the local conditions, the requirements for indoor environmental quality and the contribution of the building stock to demand-side flexibility for the purpose of improving energy system efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

2. This Directive lays down requirements as regards:

(a) the common general framework for a methodology for calculating the integrated energy performance of buildings and building units;

(b) the application of minimum requirements to the energy performance of new buildings and new building units;

(c) the application of minimum requirements to the energy performance of:

(i) existing buildings and building units that are subject to major renovation;

(ii) building elements that form part of the building envelope and that have a significant impact on the energy performance of the building envelope when they are retrofitted or replaced;

(iii) technical building systems whenever they are installed, replaced or upgraded;

(d) the application of minimum energy performance standards to existing buildings and existing building units, in accordance with Articles 3 and 9;

(da) a harmonised framework for assessing the life-cycle global warming potential;

(db) solar energy in buildings;

(dc) the phasing out of fossil fuel use in buildings;

(e) renovation passports;

(f) national building renovation plans;

(g) sustainable mobility infrastructure in and adjacent to buildings; and

(h) smart buildings;

(ha) nature-based solutions that reinforce the good use and adaptation of the public space surrounding the buildings with elements such as wood materials, greens roofs and facades and solutions that are inspired and supported by nature, which can simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits and help build resilience;

(i) energy performance certification of buildings or building units;

(j) regular inspection of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems in buildings;

(k) independent control systems for energy performance certificates, renovation passports, smart readiness indicators and inspection reports;

(ka) the indoor environmental quality performance of buildings.

3. The requirements laid down in this Directive are minimum requirements and shall not prevent any Member State from maintaining or introducing more stringent measures. Such measures shall be compatible with the TFEU. They shall be notified to the Commission.