WWF: Efficient buildings are the easiest way to reduce CO2 emissions
By investing in energy efficiency in buildings, the EU can cut 6% of its CO2 emissions and create 280,000-450,000 new jobs in the building sector by 2020. This, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), is one of the main priorities if the EU wants to achieve its goal of reducing our green house gas emissions by at least 20% by 2020.
More wealth, more jobs and less CO2 – all these can be the result of making our buildings more energy efficient and the reason why this subject has become a top priority at WWF, one of the largest environment organisations in the world.
“Buildings are a major CO2 contributor in Europe, but luckily we can do something about it,” says Mariangiola Fabbri, who is Senior Energy Policy Officer at the WWF European Policy Office in Brussels.
For WWF it would be sensible to make it mandatory that all buildings undergoing renovation should be optimised to meet the best known energy practices. This is not the case today.
Creating jobs at the same time
The WWF estimates that 280,000-450,000 jobs can be created in the building sector alone by 2020, just by making our existing building stock more energy efficient and by constructing new buildings according to the best available technologies. This was stated in the report “Low carbon jobs for Europe” published in June 2009. The report also shows that the low carbon economy will continue to expand in the future, whereas employment in extractive (mining, oil and gas) and climate polluting industries will continue to decline.
Unfortunately, not all governments are realising this. Mariangiola Fabbri explains:
“Even though many governments around Europe say that our buildings are important when it comes to curbing CO2 emissions, they do too little to promote energy efficiency in buildings – especially when considering the fact that they can actually boost the economy as well by creating jobs.”
Incentives pave the way
According to WWF, governments have to give building owners incentives to carry out the necessary improvements such as, for instance, insulation, new windows and solar panels. This could be done by facilitating low interest loans or by subsidising special schemes for property owners that encourage energy renovation.
Germany and France are among the frontrunners offering these incentives by providing favourable loans for energy savings and by investing in the renovation of public buildings.
