Green houses, final OK. Italy and Hungary vote against

Ecofin has closed, a little more than a year after the European Parliament's first vote, the long path of the Epbd (Energy performance of buildings directive) with Italy voting against along with Hungary (20 votes in favour, 15 out of 27 were sufficient). And it is really the last step for the framework regulation that will define the rules for the energy requalification of buildings throughout Europe from now until 2050.

The penultimate step took place on 10 April with the green light from the member states: the ambassadors to the EU had confirmed at the Coreper meeting (the Standing Committee of the Representatives of the member states) - in a point without discussion - the agreement reached with the European Parliament in December, then voted on during the March plenary session, on the new rules to make the EU building stock zero-emission by 2050. No objections were raised, and so the directive ended up on the table of the EU Ecofin Council for final confirmation, again without discussion. All that remains now is to wait for it to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union.

The set-up reached in December during the negotiations between the EU institutions, in short, held up to the end, despite substantial opposition from countries such as Italy. Thus the course of the most relevant passage of the directive, Article 9, changed completely. If until a few weeks ago the hypothesis had been to indicate stringent requirements for individual buildings (with energy class D obligatory from 2033), leaving no room for member countries, this passage has been revised, in the name of greater flexibility. Member countries will have to define plans to reduce the consumption of their residential building stock. 2020 is considered the year zero and 2050 the year in which a zero-emission building stock will have to be in place. In between, states will have to ensure a gradual improvement of the situation, but thinking on consumption averages and no longer on the efficiency class of individual buildings.

Intermediate reduction targets for the Member States' building stock will be 16% by 2030 and 20-22% by 2035. It will be up to the Member States to determine, with their plans, how these targets will be achieved. Above all, the directive sets a constraint: the majority of renovations will have to concern the lowest performing 43% of the building stock. In this way, the objectives will not only be achieved by new buildings: in Italy, priority will be given to work on five million buildings.

The other big issue is the abandonment of fossil fuels, starting with natural gas boilers, in homes. The date by which to achieve a complete ban has been moved forward to 2040; the previous deadline was 2035. Not only that. While the tax incentives for these appliances will be cancelled from 2025, it has been explicitly stated that it will be possible to give incentives to hybrid heating systems, such as those combining boilers and heat pumps.