Caroline Simpson

With Europe’s building stock responsible for 36% of the continent’s CO2 and 40% of its energy use, energy efficient building renovations are a Member State’s ticket to achieving the 55% reduction in emissions that the EU requires by 2030.

This is particularly true for Central and Eastern European countries where, according to the EU Building Stock Observatory, there are 43.6 million single- and multi-family homes – not to mention thousands of schools, hospitals, and office buildings. As two-thirds of these homes were built over 30 years ago, many have leaking windows, walls and roofs and outdated heating and lighting systems – meaning that these buildings are grossly inefficient and have a high carbon footprint.

However, it’s not just the environment that suffers from this inefficiency. Citizens do too, as an inefficient building often means higher energy bills and lower levels of comfort.

Renovating Europe is a daunting task. It’s also a necessary one. But with the right solutions and the right partners, it’s a task that is very much within reach. As Knauf Insulation Eastern Europe & Middle East General Manager Radek Bedrna said during his remarks at Renovate Europe Day 2024 in Budapest: “We need to work together to make buildings and housing affordable for citizens – especially for our children and future generations – and this work starts with energy efficient home renovations.”

The good news is that energy efficient building renovations can benefit both the environment and citizens.

The even better news is that doing so isn’t overly complicated.

The benefits of the right solutions

According to a 2022 Building Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) report, improving the energy performance of the building envelope would result in a 44% reduction in the amount of natural gas used for heating. Furthermore, such renovations would ultimately save 45% of the final energy consumption currently used to heat Europe’s residential buildings.

The BPIE report also looks at the positive impact properly insulating homes would have within different EU countries. Germany, for instance, stands to cut its buildings’ final energy consumption nearly in half (47%) and save 331.7 TWh. In Poland, that number would be 39%, whereas Romania would achieve a 56% final energy savings – the highest potential savings in the study.

When looking at gas savings, Italy, Slovakia and Romania see the highest savings at 49%, 53% and 56% respectively. Whereas France and Slovenia would see a significant reduction in oil-supplied heating energy, Poland would lower its coal-supplied heating by 49%.

What these numbers show is that regardless of energy source, improving insulation decreases fossil fuel use and, in doing so, reduces Europe’s energy dependency and carbon footprint.

Even greater savings can be unlocked by integrating complementary energy-efficient solutions on top of insulating and replacing windows—such as upgrading heating and cooling systems and using smart energy management. By combining these approaches, we can maximise efficiency, further decrease reliance on natural gas imports, and accelerate the shift toward a more sustainable and resilient energy future.

Ensuring insulation delivers on its energy saving promise

But why stop there when we have the potential to do even more?

Maximising a home’s energy efficiency starts with the right solutions—not just in insulation but in ensuring real energy savings. This means reliable methods for measuring efficiency, effective renovation strategies, and strong collaboration with decision-makers, contractors, and homeowners. In fact, in Hungary, Knauf Insulation provided input into the country’s Home Renovation Programme, an ambitious initiative that aims to renovate 20,000 single-family homes, calling for a 5-7 year predictability to allow the industry to adapt and deliver necessary energy bill savings to even more households.

The opportunity is here — let’s get to work and renovate Central and Eastern Europe’s buildings together!

Dive into Renovate Europe’s 2024 Activity Report to discover highlights from Renovate Europe Day in Hungary, our policy activities, publications, and engaging national and European events.

A big thank you to all our partners and everyone who contributed to the success of Renovate Europe events last year!

At ROCKWOOL we emphasize our commitment to sustainability and climate care though various initiatives aimed at reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Our insulation products are designed to significantly enhance energy efficiency in buildings. By improving thermal performance, our stone wool products can reduce energy needs for heating and cooling by up to 70-90%, allowing buildings to save more energy than what is consumed during the insulation’s production within just a few months. The stone wool insulation sold in 2023 is projected to save over 818 TWh of energy over its lifetime, equivalent to the annual electricity use of more than 68 million homes.

Andrzej Kielar (Managing Director ROCKWOOL CEE) repeatedly emphasized during the discussions held at Renovate Europe Day 2024 that, given the many challenges of the modern world, we cannot afford to do nothing about deep renovation of building stock. Let us therefore take advantage of the unique opportunity presented by the wave of building renovations to improve the comfort of our lives and have a positive impact on the natural environment now and in the future.

Our involvement into energy efficiency aligns closely with the objectives of EPBD directive. It plays a crucial role in supporting the EU net zero efforts by establishing energy efficiency and emissions standards for buildings. Why is it important? Let’s recall basic facts. Buildings use about 40% of global energy, 25% of global water, 40% of global resources, and they emit approximately 1/3 of GHG emissions.

We spend a large part of our lives, work and time after work in buildings. That is why they are so important to us and the climate. Never before has so much attention been paid to the building stock. The implementation of the EPBD is a unique opportunity for all of us to make our homes, workplaces and places of rest healthy, environmentally friendly and financially efficient. To achieve this, it is enough to once and effectively perform thermal modernization of buildings that need it. The solutions we develop at ROCKWOOL are those that stay with buildings throughout the period in which we use them. Very often, the modernization of building stock is viewed through the prism of costs rather than benefits. And there are many, as we will outline later in this article.

Social benefits of thermal modernization

There is nothing more valuable than health. Healthy people live and work in healthy buildings, because only such buildings provide the right conditions for life. And what are the facts? 75% of buildings in the EU are low energy buildings. 85% of them were built before 2000. These buildings will remain in our landscape for a long time. And it is worth taking care of them so that they provide us with warmth in winter and protect us from increasingly frequent heat waves in summer. Underheated and overheated buildings can be a source of illness and significantly reduce the comfort of life and work.

Environmental benefits of thermal modernization

The climate crisis is the greatest challenge of the 21st century and there is no more important global effort than the one related to reducing GHG emissions. Without decarbonization of the building stock, the energy transformation and achieving climate neutrality will not be effective. Increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and thus reducing energy demand also means reducing harmful smog, which contributes to several hundred thousand premature deaths in the EU every year.

Economic benefits of thermal modernization

As mentioned earlier, deep thermal modernization translates into lower energy consumption and thus a significant reduction in the bills related to the maintenance of individual buildings. This is particularly important in view of the alarming statistics on energy poverty in the EU. Approximately 50 million households in the EU are estimated to live in energy poverty, struggling to afford adequate energy services necessary for heating, cooling, and lighting their homes. This represents about 14.6% of EU households reporting inadequate energy expenditures.

Signify, the world leader in lighting, has an important role to play in the global transition to net zero. Climate action has been central to Signify’s sustainability strategy for more than a decade. We have taken the lead in helping municipalities, businesses, and consumers switch to energy-efficient LED and connected LED lighting— a fast and effective way to make progress toward sustainability goals.

For example, switching all light points in Hungary to connected LED could reduce CO₂e emissions by 0.7 Mt and free up 3 TWh of electricity annually, equivalent to the annual energy consumption of 938,000 households.

A human-centric approach to light

Light accompanies us throughout our lives and has a profound impact on our quality of life. It affects our circadian rhythm, quality of sleep, hormone levels, and cognitive performance. We spend an average of 90% of our time in buildings, which is why it is so important, when modernising lighting, to take care of both improving energy efficiency and adapting lighting to people at the same time.

Imagine that we spend 36% of our time at the workplace, so the right lighting is crucial for helping us see well, feel well, and perform well. The digitalisation of lighting and LED technology allows us to create the smart, connected LED lighting systems that – apart from impactful electricity savings up to 80% – can also provide a noticeable improvement in employee well-being by adapting lighting to our circadian rhythm. Moreover, our innovative NatureConnect lighting systems mimic daylight and replicate a view to the sky using light scenes that boost energy levels and help windowless spaces feel in sync with nature, while enhancing the well-being of those in the room.

The business case for enhancing well-being and productivity

The relationship between office lighting and well-being and productivity is undeniable. However, the impact is often underestimated by companies. It is worth realising that the real costs for most companies are related to staffing costs (salaries and benefits), which account for about 90% of typical business operating costs. Improving the well-being and consequently the productivity of employees can have similar, if not potentially greater, financial implications than saving on energy bills. That is why we at Signify believe that the connected LED systems can deliver much more benefits than just electricity savings.

Supporting the EU’s net-zero ambition

The EU aims for an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) is one of the critical mechanisms to reach this ambition target. The EPBD requires EU countries to develop long-term renovation strategies that facilitate the cost-effective transformation of existing buildings into much more energy-efficient and livable spaces.

Signify is committed to reach net-zero emissions, through its own products, systems and services. Connected LED lighting as a “technical building system” directly affects building energy consumption and is included in the EPBD’s energy performance calculation. In offices, lighting currently accounts for 17% of all energy use and as much as 40% of electricity use in ambient warehousing, and even more in the school environment. Connected LED lighting is an important contributor to net-zero building renovation plans, especially when integrated with building automation or management systems, referred to in the EPBD as “built-in lighting.” For non-residential buildings, the revised EPBD mandates the use of building automation and controls, including the use of automatic lighting controls with occupancy detection.

A triple win for the climate, the economy, and the society

At Signify, we’ve long believed that well-being is as important as energy efficiency in sustainability considerations. Sustainable buildings are not only more energy efficient, but they are also able to improve the well-being and efficiency of the people working or learning in them. The latest version of the EPBD includes standards for indoor environmental quality (IEQ) recognising that “healthy buildings are vital to the well-being of EU citizens and actively contribute to the productivity, creativity, and safety of their occupants,” as LightingEurope points out.

We believe that thanks to the clear EPBD guidelines for technical building systems, we have a unique opportunity to achieve a triple-win for Climate, Economy and Society in the 21^st Century during the upcoming building renovation revolution.