Energy-efficient engineering is not going to expand if it is not cost-effective – said Mr. Andrzej Wiszniewski, Board member of the Association of Certified Energy Auditors, during the debate “Energy-efficient engineering in Poland – EU directive implementation”.
According to Mr. Wiszniewski, about 120 thousand property owners have energy certificates. In his opinion, the certificate does not affect the property value. However, examples from other countries prove that the influence can be visible.
Mr. Ryszard Kowalski, President of the Association of Construction Materials Manufacturers, thinks that energy certificates have a purely informative, yet uncertain function. The certificate can tell a potential buyer how much energy is consumed by the building, and makes the sale transaction easier for the seller.
Mr. Kowalski calls for not frightening Polish people by saying that as soon as the energy certificate regulations are adopted, sale transactions on the secondary market will not be possible if there is no valid certificate for the property.
Director for Institutional Relations at Isover Saint-Gobain, Mr. Henryk Kwapisz, concluded that under the draft regulations, property offer will have to include energy use level: “There is a chance that it will start being a market value and developers may start playing with it”.
In the opinion of Mr. Roman Głaz, Deputy Director in the Department of Air Protection, Polish Ministry of the Environment, improving energy efficiency of buildings means above all reduction of maintenance costs. He also stressed the importance of environmental costs: the smaller energy consumption, the less environmental pollution.
The new regulation draft adopted by the Polish Government in late April 2014 is supposed to promote energy-effective engineering and energy-reducing technologies in buildings. Dissemination of energy-efficient ideas calls for widespread information about energy-related quality of buildings and potential running costs. It also needs guidelines for energy efficiency improvement. This will help owners and users of construction properties to modernize the buildings, as the authors of the draft assume.
Today, each and every new building is required to have an energy certificate which determines its energy use. In future, all large buildings will be obliged to have the certificate. Owners or administrators of such buildings who want to sell or rent their properties will have to have the energy certification process carried out. It will also apply to holders (owners or lessees) of cooperative ownership rights to a residential property in case of its transfer.
Summing up the debate Mr. Kwapisz assessed that building energy-efficient houses can be economically viable.
Ms. Anna Żyła, Head Ecology Specialist at the Bank for Environmental Protection is of the same opinion: “The role of support programs cannot be overestimated. On the one hand, they have an educational role, but on the other, they serve as compensation or financial incentive for investors”. She added that such support could make investments more common and the technologies cheaper.
Mr. Kowalski praised the Government for trying to implement EU directive in the least possible risky way.
The debate took place in late June 2014.
(Polish Press Agency)
