There are at least three meth­ods to sup­port ener­gy-sav­ing build­ing, infor­ma­tion, neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive approach.

 

The infor­ma­tion sup­port sys­tem main­ly con­sists in cre­at­ing a com­mer­cial val­ue of the ener­gy per­for­mance of the build­ing, tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion by poten­tial buy­ers of the house or flat.

 

The neg­a­tive method bases on impos­ing require­ments in scope of ener­gy effi­cien­cy of build­ings and sanc­tion­ing the cre­ation of build­ings that fail to meet the stan­dards.

 

The pos­i­tive sup­port is based, on the oth­er hand, on sys­tems of co-financ­ing ener­gy-sav­ing build­ing.

 

In infor­ma­tion and neg­a­tive sup­port, the eco­nom­ic bur­den is on investors, with the dif­fer­ence that the first one assumes their will to bear such bur­den, while the oth­er impos­es such oblig­a­tion. In the pos­i­tive sup­port, the final cost is spread out on all tax­pay­ers.

 

The infor­ma­tion sup­port, which is already used based on build­ing ener­gy per­for­mance cer­tifi­cates, will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly strength­ened by the imple­men­ta­tion of Direc­tive 2010/31/EU into the act on ener­gy per­for­mance of build­ings that is being cre­at­ed.

 

How­ev­er the ques­tion is how quick­ly the social aware­ness can evolve con­cern­ing eco­nom­ic returns of the invest­ment, if not con­cern­ing the impact of ener­gy-sav­ing build­ing on envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.

 

A strong neg­a­tive approach, seem­ing as the most effec­tive, is dif­fi­cult to imple­ment due to polit­i­cal and social rea­sons, and addi­tion­al­ly, as a para­dox, it may lim­it the num­ber of build­ings con­struct­ed using ener­gy-sav­ing tech­nolo­gies because more funds are need­ed to com­plete such a project. For the rea­sons referred to above, it is hard to assume that the def­i­n­i­tion of the near-zero ener­gy build­ing being devel­oped at min­istry lev­el will con­tain the deter­mi­na­tion of pri­ma­ry ener­gy con­sump­tion at a lev­el that will trans­late to a dras­tic increase in demand for ener­gy-sav­ing tech­nolo­gies.

The pos­i­tive sup­port is the most effi­cient solu­tion, as it takes into con­sid­er­a­tion social psy­chol­o­gy aspects — we treat as a loss some­thing we could have for free but for which we did not reach. Despite its high cost­li­ness relat­ed to the cre­ation of ear­marked funds, tax exemp­tions, etc., it is the best way to achieve the assumed goals — reduc­tion of green­house gas­es emis­sion and reduc­tion of depen­den­cy on import­ed ener­gy.

 

The role of pub­lic insti­tu­tions and devel­op­ers in devel­op­ment of the above­men­tioned three aspects of sup­port is var­ied.

 

First­ly, when analysing the infor­ma­tion sup­port, one has to note that the cre­ation of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem is a very good mech­a­nism to shape social aware­ness con­cern­ing the ben­e­fits of devel­op­ment of ener­gy-sav­ing build­ing. The only thing that has to be added to the exist­ing mod­el is the appro­pri­ate PR sup­port. Here, the main part may be played both by pub­lic and pri­vate bod­ies. The fol­low­ing may be giv­en as an exam­ple: cre­ation of aware­ness-rais­ing pro­mo­tion­al actions, sums that may be saved using the con­struc­tion tech­nique which con­tains ener­gy-sav­ing build­ing ele­ments or cre­ation of inter­net plat­forms which allow to cal­cu­late the invest­ment return peri­od.

 

Sec­ond­ly, when refer­ring to the neg­a­tive method, one has to point out that one has to be very pru­dent in the lob­by­ing process con­cern­ing the shape of the def­i­n­i­tion of the near zero-ener­gy build­ing.  A too strict def­i­n­i­tion of con­di­tions could lead to a drop in num­ber of invest­ment projects due to the need to col­lect greater funds. But noth­ing stands in the way of reach­ing the strict stan­dards in longer per­spec­tive.

 

Third­ly, pub­lic author­i­ty insti­tu­tions and devel­op­ers have the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ties in the scope of pos­i­tive sup­port. The role of pub­lic insti­tu­tions should con­sist in devel­op­ing a sys­tem of finan­cial incen­tives on oth­er terms than the ones already in place. The sup­port sys­tem should cov­er not only per­sons who take up loans, but also per­sons who finance the invest­ment from their own funds. Cur­rent­ly, the Nation­al Fund for Envi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion and Water Man­age­ment through select­ed banks only sup­ports lenders who buy flats or estab­lish­ments which meet the para­me­ters spec­i­fied in the pro­gram.

 

The role of devel­op­ers con­sists in assist­ing the devel­op­ment of doc­u­ments nec­es­sary to obtain co-financ­ing and offer­ing a range of pos­si­ble tech­ni­cal solu­tions allow­ing to achieve the required stan­dards.

 

Paweł Puch­er — Part­ner, Kac­zor Klim­czyk Puch­er Wyp­iór – Adwokaci

 

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The debate is part­nered by the Mura­tor Pub­lish­ing House.