13 October 2014: The ENTRANZE (Enforce the Transition to Nearly Zero Energy Buildings in the EU-27) project has released an online scenario tool to promote net zero-energy buildings (NZEB) and renewable heating and cooling (RES-H/C) in Europe. The tool allows policy makers to explore alternative policy packages and assess their ability to help countries meet EU requirements for renewable energy and energy efficiency in the building sector.

The tool presents alternative scenarios of the building stock and its energy demand in the EU-28 (plus Serbia) up to 2030, with a focus on 2020 targets under the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). It allows users to explore the effect of different national policy packages on energy demand and buildings refurbishment, as well as costs, expenditures and benefits.

Each national policy scenario is based on country-specific needs and priorities defined through national discussions with policy makers and stakeholders. Two established models—POLES and INVERT/EE-Lab—were used to calculate the results by coupling data on end-user prices, the power mix and other key input data with residential and non-residential demand scenarios for heating, hot water cooling and lighting energy, taking into account rebound effects and economic, technical and institutional barriers.

Results are available for the EU and nine countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Romania and Spain. ENTRANZE is a project funded by Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE) that provides data, analysis and guidelines to promote NZEBs and RES-HC in Europe’s existing building stocks while connecting building experts from European research and academia to national decision makers and key stakeholders. [Construction21 Press Release] [ENTRANZE Online Scenario Tool]