UK & Ireland breach renewables in building regs law - key chance to combine energy efficiency & renewables

What a way to start the new year: when the bells rang in on 1 January Ireland and the UK breached a legally binding EU requirement to set minimum levels of renewable energy in building regulations for new builds and major renovations - including dwellings and non domestic buildings in both cases. Even Ireland's current renewable energy target for new homes fails on a technicality, as legal expert Philip Lee writes in issue 9 of Passive House Plus.

Writing on the seemingly unrelated matter of whether a passive house with renewables is an alternative method of meeting Ireland's Part L, Lee dropped the bombshell that Ireland's current building regs for new homes breach a requirement of article 13(4) of Directive 2009/28/EC on renewable energy (known as the RES Directive). The directive states as follows:

Member States shall, in their building regulations and codes or by other means with equivalent effect, where appropriate, require the use of minimum levels of energy from renewable sources in new buildings and in existing buildings that are subject to major renovation.

There's no opt out on this, and no option of a derogation, so evidently the UK and Ireland have a lot of explaining to do. If our reading of this is correct, it means that the market for renewable energy systems is set to increase dramatically at the stroke of a pen. It's now up to us at Passive House Plus to try and cajole them into getting their acts together. This is the kind of unpaid [cue the sad violins] lobbying work we do which stands to benefit many companies in the industry, including many of our advertisers, whose loyalty makes this work possible. So thank you.   

The directive also states that in meeting this requirement, "Member States may take into account national measures relating to substantial increases in energy efficiency and relating to cogeneration and to passive, low or zero-energy buildings," which we see as a clear opportunity for passive house and low energy building in general, and an opportunity to ensure that energy efficiency and renewable energy compliment eachother rather than competing. As such we've advised the officials to avoid repeating the mistake Ireland made with its renewables target for new homes - by choosing a fixed kWh target, rather than a percentage of primary energy demand. (As many of our Irish readers know from bitter experience, this means if you make your building too energy efficient, you can easily end up without a large enough energy demand for your renewable energy systems to meet. To make this crystal clear: in order to meet Ireland's energy efficiency laws, some designers are making buildings less energy efficient. You. Couldn't. Make. It. Up.)

We've put lists of questions to the relevant officials in the UK and Ireland, as well as the commission itself, and will report back with progress.