iBROAD

The renovation of buildings is key for the European Union to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 as set out in the European Green Deal and the Renovation Wave for Europe. Currently, only 11% of the EU existing building stock undergoes a renovation each year, and only 1% of those renovations address the energy performance of buildings.

For most homeowners, a renovation process is complex, time-consuming and financially challenging. As a result, staged renovations, where building owners renovate components only once their useful life has expired or with other needs in mind than energy performance (rearranging spaces, upgrading the façade, etc.) are predominant.  This results in sub-optimal renovations from a technical and economical perspective.

The iBROAD project developed a Building Renovation Roadmap to help homeowners overcome these barriers. The Building Renovation Roadmap provides owners of single-family and multi-family houses with a long-term (5 to 30 years) and step-by-step plan for their building renovation with the support of trained energy auditors, following an on-site building energy audit and an interview with the homeowner for a tailor-made approach. A digital Building Logbook that brings together all building related information in one place supports this. The Logbook organises the building’s history in “snapshots”, allowing homeowners to revisit each stage in their building’s evolution and is useful for technicians for home maintenance or improvements, energy auditors and other service providers.

The iBROAD project developed a number of interesting handbooks, training tools and guidance materials for different stakeholder groups: the iBROAD Handbook for Energy Auditors, the iBRoad Policy Brief providing guidance to policy makers on the implementation of the iBROAD tools and the Layman’s report, targeted towards anyone without a specific technical background.

Pilots in Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, and Germany involving 65 buildings, confirmed the potential of the developed tools. A feasibility study by the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) in 20 more buildings, outside the project, further underlined this potential. The iBRoad project also greatly contributed to the uptake of Building Renovation Roadmaps and Building Logbooks in the most recent Long Term Renovation Strategies of several EU Member States.

A follow up project ‘iBRoad2EPC’ will further investigate the extension of the iBRoad tools to other building types and support the further integration of EPC schemes with Building Renovation Passports.

Further links:

• EU project factsheet
• Project videos