Climate change and profligacy in use of energy resources has its direct homespun aspect. Buildings regarded as a home or a workplace or shopping outlet account for 37 per cent of total energy consumption worldwide and, together with transport, for more than half of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to research by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

To ensure a greener future, the pollution from, and energy used by buildings have to be reduced. Currently, both as polluters and energy users, buildings are first and thus worst on the list.

With this idea in mind, business advisory SoPolEc gathered governmental and EU officials, representatives of non-governmental organisations and think-tanks, real estate developers and operators, lawyers, energy auditors, consultants and architects at a conference entitled Build Green CEE: Energy Efficient and Ecological Design for the Region. It was held on April 23-24 in Bucharest, Romania.

Those who attended agreed that to trigger meaningful change in the way that buildings are done, a holistic and co-ordinated effort was necessary.

Developers should consider more environmentally friendly and energy-saving materials and technologies at the design, construction and operation stages of new buildings. Architects should gradually resort to renewable energy sources (RES)-fed installations for heating and cooling, equipment to recycle waste and water when designing new homes.

Governments and local authorities should draft policies encouraging people to insulate their homes to avert energy losses.

The green approach to buildings should also be promoted through information campaigns and financial support at country and pan-European level.

Financial incentives were also integral because generally energy-efficient equipment cost more at start-up than conventional counterparts and only at a later stage they brought savings to building owners.

In effect, the process has already started in a bottom-up fashion, conference participants heard. The European Commission (EC) endorsed Directive 2002/91/EC on energy efficiency in buildings, which seeks to cut both buildings’ energy use and carbon emissions, said David Crous Duran, an EC official working for the sustainable energy Europe department.

Most EU governments, Bulgaria and Romania included, have already transposed the directive into their legislation and have introduced scoring systems evaluating buildings’ performance in terms of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, health and wellbeing, among others. This scoring is performed by the so-called energy auditors and the “eco-passport” issued to buildings is called an energy certificate.

In Bulgaria, under the Energy Efficiency Act, all owners of buildings with a built-up area of 1000 sq m are obliged to obtain an energy certificate, as are all industrial premises owners.

In Romania, energy certification has been promoted at a governmental level, said Professor Emilia-Cerna Mladin of the Romanian Association of Energy Auditors. An incentive sees the government, the municipality and the building’s owner account for 33 per cent of energy certification costs.

The process is yet to gain mass scale, though, because the notion of eco-labeling is still largely unpopular with ordinary citizens. At the same time, their share of the building stock and total energy consumption is overwhelming. Proprietary houses account for 97 per cent of all buildings in Romania and blocks of flats for 39 per cent of all dwellings. A Romanian bloc consumes, on average, 390 kWh/sq m a year, as compared to an EU average of 220 kWh/sq m a year.

Jacques Gilbert, technical and marketing director on building innovations for the Middle East, Europe and Africa at DuPont, expanded on this, saying that new buildings were much more up-to-date to green technologies than old ones judging from their consumption parameters.

The expert presented energy efficiency statistics for Zurich buildings of various ages to illustrate the fact that the newer the building, the more energy efficient it was. Hence, innovation was the key to keeping consumption levels low.

Nonetheless, new premises still control a minute share of the total building stock. Therefore, if tangible effect was to be achieved soon, measures to upgrade old buildings should take centre stage.

Conference lecturers also made clear that to build green meant to innovate. Participants heard about the world’s first ever zero emissions building, to house the headquarters of environmental NGO Regional Environmental Centre (REC). Named the REC Zero Emissions Conference Centre, it will be operational in Hungary from June 2008.

Gilbert spoke of plastics made of plants and not from oil, the conventional input material.

Building green, therefore, has much to do with the future, yet to bring this future closer one has to start acting now, was the final message of the conference.