Influencing decision-making processes in public energy efficiency projects: wider benefits as a driver for deep building renovation

Renovation of public buildings is tied with complicated administrative processes and procurement procedures. In most countries small and medium municipalities are not obliged to have an energy plan. It is therefore often up to the willingness and the scarce resources of the administration. It often turns into an extra, overtraining responsibility of the municipal technical office, which deals with all topics related to the built environment. This administrative staff are often not experts in energy management and therefore lack the expertise in energy-related questions. Other problems of municipalities are the dispersion of data (small municipalities are sometimes not aware of the data collected by other entities, therefore they cannot use it), lack of coordination among different departments and offices, lack of statistical office, as well as lack of interest. As a result of these problems, authorities often fail to identify realistic and cost-effective interventions and set realistic and tailored goals for their municipality. The presented work investigates how the integration of new information into existing budgeting and planning frameworks can change the decisions of the involved persons towards a more sustainable planning. The added information is based on socio-economic cost benefit analysis of energy efficiency measures and provides percentual and monetised values for benefits like increased productivity or the effects of reduced CO2 emissions. The combined financial benefit of these parameters often leads to reduced payback periods which is also integrated into the updated schemes. The necessary numbers are obtained from a complex assessment software: “the EERAdata Decision Support Tool (DST)”, which currently under development within the European Horizon 2020 funded project EERAdata.      «

Renovation of public buildings is tied with complicated administrative processes and procurement procedures. In most countries small and medium municipalities are not obliged to have an energy plan. It is therefore often up to the willingness and the scarce resources of the administration. It often turns into an extra, overtraining responsibility of the municipal technical office, which deals with all topics related to the built environment. This administrative staff are often not experts in en...     »