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INTERVIEW


Reinvestment for a greener future


Claude Turmes is a Luxembourgish politician and Member of the European


Parliament for Luxembourg’s Green Party as part of the European Greens. We spoke to him about the European perspective of policy issues surrounding energy efficient buildings, and the best ways to improve the state of both existing building stock and new buildings being built in Europe


Could you briefly outline your key priorities as an MEP, in particular those priorities as a Green MEP? Claude Turmes. In general I try to make this world a better place for citizens and if we want to do this we have to protect ecosystems but also address things like sustainable buildings. You also have to look at issues like fuel poverty, which, in light of the economic crisis in Europe, is also an issue that we have to address. With ecosystems there is also the issue of climate change.


With buildings in Europe consuming more than 40 per cent of all energy used, and older buildings being the worst offenders, what can and should the European Parliament be doing to reduce this consumption? CT. I think we have done a lot for buildings and sustainable buildings in recent years. It was under our leadership that near-


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zero energy new buildings (nZEB); as standard was introduced, which was my amendment. After getting the amendment through parliament it was agreed by the governments as well. I think since we passed that EU law, the European building industry knows that the building of tomorrow is an efficient building and this should help integrate decentralised renewables. From our view, at least, this is a big win. We know that new buildings are an important story but an even


bigger story in Europe right now is the renovation of the existing building stock. We know that 80-85 per cent of all buildings which will exist in Europe in 2050 already exist today and if we want to go for carbon neutral building stock in Europe we will have to be very skillful at renovation. We have tried in the last few years to create a mix of legislation but also tried to organise money from the EU budget under the so-called ‘structural funds’ and the


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