ManagEnergy Workshop on The Buildings Directive - opportunities at a local level - 5 March 2004

Proceedings including video on demand recordings and chat transcripts.

The European Directive on "Energy Performance of Buildings" presents a great challenge for the transformation of European building sector towards energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources. Governments are required to implement a respective legal framework.

However, in order to make sustainable energy use happen in real life, local action is essential, such as awareness raising, training, technical support for different professional groups.

Regional and local energy agencies have a crucial role to play in this process as they have both access to the local stakeholders in the building sector (such as building owners, building professionals, local authorities, equipment manufacturers, installers etc.) and to European know-how in this field.

The workshop took place as part of the World Sustainable Energy Days, Wels, Austria, March 2004. It aimed at providing up-dated information on existing successful local initiatives in the field of sustainable building solutions and it will take a two-fold approach:

• how can local actors support the objectives of the buildings directive and thereby contribute to sustainability
• how can they profit from new services that will be necessary for the implementation of the directive (e.g. certification, boiler inspection, training and monitoring of other market actors)