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Phoenix666 writes:

For John Dulac, analyst at the International Energy Agency's (IEA) Sustainable Energy Policy and Technology directorate, retrofits represent an essential part of reducing Europe's energy consumption.

"Deep energy retrofits of the existing building stock are critical to meeting a sustainable, cost-effective, low-carbon pathway for the European building sector," he says.

Dulac estimates that around 70 percent of Europe's building stock in 2050 will be composed of buildings that already exist today.

"Even if you're building hundreds of thousand of these passive-style [energy efficient] new buildings, when you're talking about 225 million existing households, it's peanuts, it's nowhere near where we need to be," he says. "So there really needs to be a drive of taking these new technologies for new constructions and translating them to low-cost technologies for existing buildings."

Dulac says that the technologies that need to be applied to existing buildings in terms of insulation, air sealing and low-emissivity, double-pane windows are typically readily available in most markets in Europe for new construction and are often highly cost effective.

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