Energy Efficiency in Urban Regeneration Framework Report: FosterREG

In the current EU scenario, urban regeneration is a heavily coded practice, involving many stakeholders in a typically complex environment. The need to bring into consideration different aspects which are essential for attaining quality urban environments, and the increasing demands of society on such quality standards have resulted in the development of complicated and often uncoordinated regulatory frameworks, mechanisms and tools used by these stakeholders.  Additionally, when incorporating new and relevant objectives to this already complicated set of problems which any urban regeneration process needs to address, the process becomes even more difficult.
In this context, the increasing urgency in addressing energy consumption in all areas of human activity, and particularly in the urban scenario, results in a need for harmonization of the different enablers (regulations and policies, as well as management and financial instruments) at the hands of different levels of the public administrations in urban regeneration and energy efficiency.
An effort in integration to go beyond topic-specific regulations and instruments requires, as a first step, a comprehensive look at the heterogeneous landscape that they are composed in at European, national, and local levels.
This publication has been elaborated in the framework of FosterREG project . It´s objective is to provide this comprehensive look as a starting point for the project’s further work.
At the European level, the report discusses, under the reference strategical framework of the “Europe 2020” framework strategy, the different Regulations and Directives relevant to energy efficiency un the urban environment and in building renovation, that Member States need to address as part of their national strategies.
Regarding urban regeneration and planning, urban issues are not a direct European Union (EU) competence and therefore there is not a specific legislation on this topic. Having said that, EU legislation has direct implications for urban policy making, as it is where all different sectoral policies have confluence: urban planning, mobility, environment, employment, and socio-economic. A brief account of the main relevant EU strategic documents and declarations is also provided in the report.
Building from this general EU frame, the report then focus on the national legislation and policies in three countries: Spain, the Netherlands, and Croatia, covering aspects such as the level structuring of National, regional and local public administrations and its influence in deployment and enforcement of strategies and regulations; and also providing an overview on the distinct national energy and urban regeneration contexts, legislations and related competence landscapes. A special effort has been made using the same report structure for all three national cases, to highlight structure and competence commonalities as well as the underlining of national specifics.
With the regulation landscape covered, the report then focuses on the different stakeholders and associated management approaches and instruments, following the same structure, from the European scale to the three national cases. The objective of this section is to identify how those stakeholders are driving energy efficiency into urban regeneration processes. Once again, this section is structured using the perspective of scale (EU, national, regional, local), as well as distinctly addressing both energy efficiency and urban regeneration.
Lastly, the same approach has been applied to identify and study different financial tools and different financial models, from fully public, to public and private finance in the FosterREG project countries (Spain, Netherlands and Croatia) to drive Energy efficiency at urban scale. Some non-public funding experiences are identified and discussed as well.
In conclusion, the last section “Evaluation of current integration of energy efficiency in urban regeneration plans” provides an assessment of how each of the FosterREG countries is undertaking Energy Efficiency measures in urban regeneration actions. Previous sections’ conclusions are shaped in the form of identified barriers and drivers, as well as tools and instruments, which would help to overcome those barriers. 

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Energy Efficiency in Urban Regeneration Framework Report: FosterREG

Sectors: Buildings, Cross cutting, Renewables

Country / Region: Croatia, Europe, Netherlands, Spain

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Knowledge Object: Publication / Report

Published by: FosterREG

Publishing year: 2015

Author: Patricia Molina, Olatz Nicolas, Francisco Rodríguez, Josu Urriolabeitia, Juan Luis Carmona, Cristina Llamas, Patxi Hernandez, Sagrario Eneriz, Jasper Donker, Sophie Jongeneel