National Standards

General Information

The implementation of National Regulations can interrupt, delay and postpone projects causing barriers in the successful realisation of any retrofitting project (EASEE, 2012).  It is important therefore that policy makers design and employ effective policies based on an extensive knowledge base. There are a number of types and levels of legislative decisions currently active, both in the European Union and at national level which are mandatory for buildings.

EU Legislation

At EU level, the two directives which influence the energy retrofitting of public buildings are the Directive 2012/27/EU on energy efficiency (EED) and the Directive on the energy performance of buildings (EPBD). The EED has three objectives:

1. Regulates the energy consumption for the entire EU.
2. Focuses on public buildings and indicates that 3 % of the total floor area of heated and/or cooled buildings owned and occupied by a central government must be renovated each year.
3. Achieve specific energy savings from an energy efficiency obligation. The EPBD requires the Member States to set a requirement for the primary energy use of the building, expressed in kWh/m2 per year, reflecting their national, regional or local conditions.

There are several incentive schemes which set the framework in a wider sense of building and district energy efficiency and also provide funding. These include the Cohesion Fund, Research Funding, Enlargement Policy Funding, Programme for Europe Energy Recovery, Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme.

National Legislation

At national level, acts, decrees and municipal regulations are used by policy makers. The implementation of the EPBD in each member state, allows for diversity in content and time frame for implementation for inclusion in the national regulations. Thus, the implementation varies from country to country depending on the local political, legal and property market differences (BIOIS, 2013). Apart from EPBD, Member States are free to include further requirements in their legislation. National building codes regulate the quality of the building envelope, as it influences the energy performance of the building. These are divided into three areas:

1. thermal transmittance of each building envelope element and the average heat transfer coefficient of building envelope
2. heat gains through solar radiation
3. airtightness of the building envelope

All countries are in the process of altering their building codes in order to achieve the EU’s 2020 targets for improved energy efficiency.

This page should be used to compare your building against the national standards in your country.

The first item shown is the chart of thermal vs electricity energy use in your building. This is calculated based on your input when you added this building.

There are a number of fields on this page where you can enter your energy use for your building or district and this will be compared against the national standard to give you an indication of the performance of your building

For more information click on the background information tab.