Umbrella organisation ES-SO launches new Position Paper to the EU strategy

If the European Commission is to realise its ambition of drastically decreasing energy consumption for heating and cooling in buildings in the next 10 years, dynamic solar shading should be an integral part of the EU Renovation Wave strategy. ES-SO, the European Solar Shading Organization, explains why in a new position paper and puts forward four recommendations.

The challenge is huge: 75% of buildings in the EU are energy inefficient. The EU Renovation Wave Strategy objective, launched in October 2020, aims to renovate 35 million buildings with increased energy performance levels by 2030. As heating and cooling are responsible for 80% of Europe’s residential building energy consumption, the EU renovation strategy focuses on decreasing energy consumption for heating and cooling by 18% in the next 10 years.

However, according to ES-SO, important opportunities will be missed if the renovation plans and strategy were to go ahead without integrating modern and dynamic solar shading. If solar shading is installed in 75% of the windows in renovated buildings, energy savings and carbon emission reduction can go up to 19% per year. Additionally, if cooling would become equally important to heating, the savings can add up to 22%.

Dynamic solar shading is a highly cost efficient and sustainable technology with solutions generating much less carbon emissions during their production process and with energy savings reaching about 60 times their CO₂ footprint over their 20-year lifespan. In summer, it decreases energy demand for cooling. In winter, natural solar gains decrease demand for heating.

“ES-SO welcomes EU’s ambition to double renovation rates in the next ten years”, says Anders Hall, President of ES-SO: “Solar shading has protected people and buildings against the sun for many decades. But for some reason, in modern buildings today, it seems like we need to reaffirm the evident use of this technology. It is just common sense that dynamic solar shading is a key technology in reaching the EU climate objectives.”

That is why ES-SO has made four important recommendations for the EU and national policymakers when moving forward with the Renovation Wave Strategy. These four recommendations are outlined in the new Position Paper: ES-SO statement on the EU Renovation Wave Strategy.