Op-ed: EU Renovation Wave – At risk of being stillborn?

By Adrian Joyce, Secretary General of EuroACE.

Breathing life into an EU initiative is always a challenging undertaking, as it requires Member States, their populations and businesses to be ready and willing to play their part.

The Renovation Wave, a flagship initiative of the European Green Deal, is set to be published in mid-October 2020. Succeeding in implementing it across all Member States will bring tangible benefits at all levels of society, as the rate and depth of energy renovations increase, bringing jobs, economic prosperity and better indoor environmental quality.

But is there a fatal flaw that will see it being stillborn? As a long-time observer of how Member States implement the EPBD, I am concerned that the fatal flaw might be the high reliance the EU must place on its individual Member States. The deadline for submitting the Long-Term Renovation Strategies was 10 March 2020, yet six months on, less than half of them had been submitted.