The Second POWER HOUSE nZEC Symposium ‘The City of Tomorrow and the Fair Energy Transition: the role of affordable and social housing providers’ held in Versailles on 3 July 2014  in the framework of the Solar Decathlon Europe 2014 represented an excellent opportunity to assess the challenges that cities of tomorrow will be facing in the near future.

Local authorities’ representatives and housing experts had the chance to discuss with the audience about how Public, Cooperative and Social Housing providers should contribute to address these challenges and secure a ‘fair energy transition’.

The report resulting from this exercise includes a brief description of the presentations by and roundtable discussions amongst Housing Europe members, POWER HOUSE TaskForces Leaders, invited speakers and Solar Decathlon Europe representatives. The report concludes with some recommendations for the housing sector and urban stakeholders to help address the challenges of affordable housing and fair energy transition that the European cities of tomorrow will be facing.

Please click here to download the report 'The City of Tomorrow and the Fair Energy Transition: the role of affordable and social housing providers'.

Housing Europe held the webinar addressed to public authorities “The nearly-Zero Energy Challenge for Housing providers and cities – a contribution to energy security?" in cooperation with the Covenant of Mayors Office on 4th November 2014 in order to present the preliminary findings of the work carried out in the framework of the “POWER HOUSE nearly-Zero Energy Challenge!” initiative.

Knowing that residential buildings are responsible for 34% of European cities’ energy needs, the aim of this webinar was to present to civil servants and Covenant of Mayors Signatories the contribution that Public, Cooperative and Social Housing providers can bring in order to help cities in reaching the goals set in their Sustainable Energy Actions Plans.

Please click here to watch the webinar 'The nearly-Zero Energy Challenge for Housing providers and cities – a contribution to energy security?'.

In Divided and Cooperative property buildings, the role of tenants or owners is crucial for the decision making process, especially for what concerns the retrofitting of existing buildings. Furthermore, Member States have different legal frameworks in place, in some cases with special rules for energy efficient renovation.

The aim of the Workshop organized by EKÜL - the Estonian Union of Co-operative Housing Associations on 12-13 June 2014 in Tallinn, was to take stock of the situation in different countries and to address good organizational practices to facilitate the decision-making process for the renovation of divided and cooperative ownership buildings.

To complement the Workshop, EKÜL organised a technical Study Visit to three different cooperative developments in the area: the first building located in Tallinn (Sopruse 202) was the biggest multi-apartment building refurbished in Estonia, 162 dwellings, also awarded in 2013 as “Best renovation project”. The visit continued in Rakvere, were participants had the opportunity to visit the Rakvere Smart House Competence Centre and other two multi-apartments buildings managed as apartment associations (Voidu 42 and Tuleviku 10) composed by 40 dwellings each.

Please click here to watch the video clip of the POWER HOUSE Divided/Cooperative ownership TaskForce Workshop & Study visit in Tallinn.

To get actual and reliable data to work on and feed the debate on cost-optimality and rational use of financial resources, some test cases of low and nearly-Zero Energy Buildings in different climate zones and types of tenure are being monitored in order to determine the real energy performance, rather than the values estimated by designers in the planning phase. The data collected and displayed on the HIVE Database cover heating and cooling, the production of hot water and technical services such as ventilation and lighting as well as the production of in-situ renewable energy systems.

Check out the successful experience of Estonia, where the refurbishment of cooperative apartments buildings led to a reduction of about 50% of the energy needs!

Some interesting EU-financed projects are coming to the end; final reports and key findings have been collected and classified into categories to help POWER HOUSE Partners capitalising on these experiences in the context of their respective TaskForces.

Since POWER HOUSE nZEC! is working to gradually link up Europe’s 41,400 local housing providers represented by Housing Europe’s members in order to help them in their path towards nearly-Zero Energy Buildings, if you are managing, or involved, in a project that is developing useful resources (guidelines, case studies, best practices or tools) which you deem they might be useful for housing managers who are working to reduce the energy consumption of their housing stocks, please do not hesitate to contact the POWER HOUSE nZEC! Coordinators…thank you in advance for your contribution!

The sole responsibility for the content of this Newsletter lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union. Neither the EACI nor the European Commission is responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

For further information, please visit www.powerhouseeurope.eu