The Green Deal stipulates that as one important step towards a green future, the focus must be on raising the energy performance of buildings, i.e. essentially on the reconstruction of buildings – the European Commission has prepared the Renovation Wave action plan for this purpose.
Since the building stock is one of the largest energy consumers in Europe and, according to the European Commission, 75 percent of it wastes energy, the reconstruction of buildings has a significant positive impact on energy savings, also reducing the energy costs of homeowners.
For example, in Estonia's experience, the reconstruction of an apartment building with energy label class C can save heating energy by 65 percent and reduce heating energy and electricity costs by 50 percent.
More than half of Estonia's building stock was completed during the Soviet era, and it is estimated that 80 percent of the current buildings both in Estonia and in Europe are still in use even after 30 years, while according to the building life cycle theory, the average lifespan of a building is considered to be 50–70 years.
This means that we have a large-scale reconstruction ahead of us in order to keep high quality and liveability of our living environment and today's buildings in the future. In order to achieve that, this year Estonia approved a new long-term strategy for the reconstruction of buildings aimed at energy performance.
Long-term strategy for building reconstruction
In 2020, the government approved a long-term reconstruction strategy, the main goal of which is to completely renovate all buildings built before 2000 in Estonia by 2050.
The main goal of the strategy is to completely reconstruct the building stock to energy performance class C by 2050, so it is necessary to reconstruct 100,000 detached houses, 14,000 apartment buildings and 27,000 non-residential buildings in the following decades.
The strategy presents a long-term vision for the reconstruction of buildings and describes the activities and their scope necessary to achieve the goal. Based on this, it is possible to start looking for sources of coverage necessary to realise the goal and to develop support measures.
The long-term reconstruction strategy is based on the following principles:
- cost-effective implementation of energy performance requirements,
- regional balance,
- quality of the living and working environment,
- technology development,
- climate changes mitigation and adaptation.
Last updated: 02.07.2023
