Europe

The European Commission has presented its recovery plan for Europe, which would bring the total financial firepower of the EU budget for 2021-2027 to 1,85 trillion EUR. The funds would be invested in recovery and resilience and aligned with the objectives of the European Green Deal, including in the building and energy sectors.

During its 63rd meeting, the General Assembly of the Eurovent Association defined a new vision for the future of the European HVACR industry. Mr Naci Sahin starts the final year of his second election term as President of Europe’s Industry Association for Indoor Climate (HVAC), Process Cooling, and Food Cold Chain Technologies.

The Eurovent Team continuously receives and applies feedback from its members to further develop and improve the services related to our online portal. The Eurovent Extranet has recently gained a new feature, which allows members to download the Eurovent meetings directly into their personal calendar.

Eurovent calls for an ambitious EU green recovery package that focuses on renovating the EU ‘s building stock, modernising the energy system, and investing in digitalisation and the circular economy. The next EU budget presents a unique opportunity to reboot the European economy and set it on the track to carbon-neutrality.

The report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) shows a growing gap between rhetoric and action in decarbonising the economy. Although the uptake of renewables in the EU is accelerating, progress on energy efficiency – especially in buildings – is too slow. The EU stands the most to gain from the energy transition but a much higher level of funding in building renovation and the deployment of energy efficiency technologies is needed to reach the 2050 targets. The solution lies at the nexus of the European Green Deal and the COVID-19 recovery plan.

In light of the coronavirus pandemic and the situation in Italy, the Organising Committee of RoomVent 2020 has decided to postpone the Conference. Organised by Politecnico di Torino, the 15th RoomVent Conference will take place from 14 to 17 February 2021 in Turin, Italy.

The European Parliament’s Research Service (EPRS) published a study outlining the economic benefits of EU common action and what the costs of dismantling the EU Single Market would be if the current coronavirus crisis were to stall or reverse the process of European integration.

The European Court of Auditors’ recent Special Report ‘Energy efficiency in buildings’ shows that EU-funded projects still do not focus on achieving the greatest potential energy savings per euro invested. Although the Commission has issued extensive guidance for improving energy efficiency investments in buildings including their cost-effectiveness, audited Member States allocated budget to projects on a first-come first-served basis, without weighing relative costs and benefits.

The European Commission has signed the contract with a consortium composed of Viegand Maagøe, VHK and Öko Recherche on 25 March 2020. The project website is now live.  Even though the contract runs for nine months until November, it is the intention to have it available preferably by September. Of note is that the project website refers to the March 2020 EU Circular Economy Action Plan.

As part of the European Green Deal, the European Commission will put forward a comprehensive plan to increase the EU’s 2030 climate target in September this year. The Commission invites all stakeholders and citizens to submit views on the EU’s 2030 climate ambition increase, the action and the policy design necessary for deeper greenhouse gas emission reductions.