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Knauf Energy Solutions

KES

Part of the Knauf Group, Knauf Energy Solutions is a GreenTech company building the world’s Virtual Energy Infrastructure (VEI).

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Adam Romanowski (Cabinet of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič) and FIPRA International SRL

6 Dec 2023 · Energy efficiency, Energy Performance of Building Directive

Meeting with Stina Soewarta (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager), Thomas Woolfson (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager)

3 Feb 2023 · Energy efficiency and electricity market design

Meeting with Tsvetelina Penkova (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and The European Association for the Promotion of Cogeneration

7 Jun 2022 · To to discuss the ‘Fit for 55’ Package and, more specifically the proposed revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive

Meeting with Morten Petersen (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)

20 Apr 2022 · Energy Performance of Buildings Directive

Meeting with Seán Kelly (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and European Alliance to Save Energy and

31 Mar 2022 · The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive - Stakeholder Event

Response to Revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2010/31/EU

30 Mar 2022

Knauf Energy Solutions (KES) is a European one-stop-shop for residential building renovation powered by state-of-the-art digital technology. Our experience in delivering commercial-scale retrofits for social housing underlines that the EPBD revision needs to support the digital transition by ensuring Member States (MSs) and consumers can benefit from the emergence of digital technologies that can provide highly accurate and cost effective measurement of the real performance of all buildings. Unfortunately, the EPBD recast has not embraced the fast pace of technological change in the field of energy performance measurement and this critical innovation has not been sufficiently provisioned for. The EU has set ambitious targets to reach the objective of climate neutrality by 2050 but the current situation has called for a thorough reassessment of how to ensure the security of energy supply and phase out the EU’s dependency on Russian gas as soon as possible. To deliver on the the REPowerEU 48bcm of savings through energy efficiency measures, this breakthrough European technology will be of critical importance. The EPBD therefore needs to ensure that digital energy efficiency meter technology can be used alongside and then instead of EPCs over time, as proposed by the Renovation Wave Communication. Ensuring these technologies are included in the EPBD will represent minor amendments but will have a major impact – creating a pathway for the EU to establish a trusted foundation for energy performance in buildings and delivering a major boost to the renovation wave as the EU attempts to reduce its dependence from Russian gas and transition to a low carbon society. These amendments will create the flexibility for MSs and consumers to benefit from the emergence of these new technologies by: • providing Member States with the option to use digital energy efficiency meters to determine the energy performance of buildings within the EPCs. • enabling Member States to use digital energy efficiency meters to benchmark the overall operational energy efficiency of buildings as an alternative approach to EPCs. • proposing a European certification scheme for energy efficiency metering technologies, as proposed by the Renovation Wave Communication, so as to create a European marketplace and avoiding the need for MSs to duplicate efforts by creating national certification schemes. In turn, it will allow both governments and homeowners to move from paying for measures to paying for the real improvement in the energy performance of the building. Once in place, accredited real performance measurement will start to drive down the costs of renovation, allow policy measures to promote performance improvements at scale and incentivise quality actors to scale renovation. The policy framework should also move towards real and measured improvements in energy performance of buildings, rather than estimates and fictive gains. The scale and speed of the renovation of Europe’s building stock will increase through the introduction of new innovative policy measures as suggested in the Renovation Wave, with pay for performance schemes such as energy efficiency purchasing agreements. This will be critical for the delivery of REPowerEU and the objective to save 48 bcm by 2030 through energy efficiency measures: indeed, these savings are only achievable with high-quality energy efficiency renovations, using digital energy efficiency meters.
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Meeting with Ville Niinistö (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)

25 Feb 2022 · EED & EPBD - staff level

Meeting with Seán Kelly (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

21 Jun 2021 · Implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (Assistant on behalf of MEP)

Response to Revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2010/31/EU

22 Mar 2021

Knauf Energy Solutions (KES) is a European one-stop-shop for residential building renovation powered by state-of-the-art digital technology. Our experience in delivering commercial-scale retrofits for social housing underlines that the EPBD revision needs to focus on two key areas. 1. Support the digital transition by ensuring Member States (MSs) and consumers can benefit from the emergence of digital technologies that can provide highly accurate and cost effective measurement of the real performance of all buildings. 2. Drive up the scale and quality of renovations by supporting Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) but also by ensuring that these are transitioned from being based on modelled estimates of their energy performance towards their real metered energy efficiency. Support the Digital Transition The EPBD needs to embrace the fast pace of technological change in the field of energy performance measurement by ensuring that digital energy efficiency meter technology can be used alongside and then instead of EPCs over time, as proposed by the Renovation Wave Communication. Currently such energy efficiency meters can only be used, as well as and not instead of, existing EPCs. This adds additional costs and discriminates against consumers that wish to use much more accurate energy efficiency metering technologies. The revision of the EPBD provides an opportunity to create the flexibility for MSs and consumers to benefit from the emergence of these new technologies by: • Explicitly providing for the possibility for MSs to allow the use of these technologies as an alternative to traditional EPCs both for certifying the performance of buildings and within national programmes that support energy efficiency. • Proposing a European certification scheme for energy efficiency metering technologies, as proposed by the Renovation Wave Communication, so as to create a European marketplace and avoiding the need for MSs to duplicate efforts by creating national certification schemes. Such amendments to the EPBD, will allow both government and homeowners to move from paying for measures to paying for the real improvement in the energy performance of the building. Once in place, accredited real performance measurement will start to drive down the costs of renovation, allow policy measures to promote performance improvements at scale and incentivise quality actors to scale renovation. Support Scale The EPBD should also be a driving force to increase the scale and speed of the renovation of Europe’s building stock through the introduction of MEPS and, more importantly, new innovative policy measures as suggested in the Renovation Wave, such as energy efficiency purchasing agreements. It should also ensure that renovation delivers value for money for governments and a return on investment for homeowners by moving the policy framework towards real and measured improvements in energy performance of buildings, rather than estimates and fictive gains. KES agrees that the introduction of MEPS will over time increase the renovation rate. MEPS should focus upon deep renovation and be linked to change of ownership/rental and/or mortgage approvals. However, KES also believes that a ten-to-fifteen fold increase in the deep renovation rate will only be achieved if regulatory measures, such as MEPS, are accompanied by the kind of market mechanisms that allowed renewables to reduce costs and rapidly increase scale, such as energy efficiency purchasing agreements. The Commission should prioritise demonstrating the effectiveness of such instruments through its Affordable Housing Initiative. The EPBD revision is the opportunity to create a market environment that does this, providing MSs with the flexibility to explore new measured and real performance approaches. The Renovation Wave will only find continued support from governments and homeowners if retrofits can be trusted to deliver the savings that were promised.
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Meeting with Nicolas Schmit (Commissioner) and

27 Nov 2020 · Pact for Skills roundtable with the construction sector.

Response to Review of Directive 2012/27/EU on energy efficiency

21 Sept 2020

Solving the Market Failure at the Heart of Energy Efficiency Renovation To deliver a step change in the deep energy efficiency renovation of buildings, innovative policy measures will be needed. The revision of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) offers an opportunity to put some of these needed policy innovations into place. Specifically, policies that reward the actual metered amount of energy saved through renovation should be supported. This will drive scale and quality, whilst bringing down the cost of energy efficiency renovation. When revising the EED, it is important to recognise that current attempts to get renovation to scale have been severely hampered by the fundamental market failure at the heart of energy efficiency renovation, specifically the “Market for Lemons” dynamic (see Akerlof’s 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics). Put simply, to date it has been impossible to pay for the real metered energy savings delivered by a renovation. Instead policymakers have had to pay for a poor proxy, namely tick-box energy efficiency measures. The current system dynamic, based on paying for measures rather than performance, allocates resources incorrectly. This leads to a market that does not function properly for consumers, government or for the market players themselves. This market dynamics also lead policymakers to try and ‘fix’ issues through additional red tape. This only creates additional market friction. But now with the emergence of cost-effective machine learning technologies that can meter energy efficiency we can address the problem directly, rather than focusing on the symptoms that it exhibits. We can move to an energy efficiency renovation market based on performance outcomes, i.e. the metered kWhs saved. In short, we can pay for Negawatt hours (nWhs), the ‘quantum’ of energy saved by renovation, rather than paying simply for the measures. The result is that energy efficiency becomes just another fungible energy source. As a result we can deploy the same policies that allowed energy production to both scale-up massively and reduce costs dramatically. In terms of specific policy areas that we see as important to make this shift, three points are important: 1. Fair Market Access a. Create European Certification for Energy Efficiency Meters – as different efficiency metering technologies emerge, there needs to be a European level approach to certifying them for use across the European Union. b. Offer Fair Access to National Schemes – once highly accurate energy efficiency metering approaches are certified, they should automatically be approved as an alternative to current national Energy Performance and be given access to national support schemes, such as the energy company obligation scheme under the EED. 2. Incentivise Performance a. Move support schemes towards performance and away from measures – in a first step, national support schemes need to be based on the energy savings delivered and not based on measures. b. More accurate more support – in addition to moving towards paying for performance, support schemes should also provide a premium for highly accurate real performance approaches. 3. Kick-Start Scale a. Encourage Member States to launch Efficiency Purchase Agreements – in parallel to a European lighthouse initiative, the European Commission should encourage Member States to use the recovery funds to trial Efficiency Purchase Agreements and to amend their national energy efficiency plans to take into account real performance approaches that support scale, quality and drive down cost.
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Meeting with Riccardo Maggi (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans)

25 Aug 2020 · Renovation wave

Response to Strategy for smart sector integration

8 Jun 2020

Supporting digitally enabled energy efficiency renovations is a cost-effective manner to link the buildings sector into the energy system to deliver on EU climate targets. The EU’s strategy for energy system integration proposals come at a time when the digital revolution can allow buildings to be transformed from climate villains at the edge of our energy system to climate champions that play an active role in supporting a secure and stable energy system. New digital approaches allow governments, finance providers, owners and tenants to finally know that the promised energy and carbon savings they invested in have been delivered. The same technologies, coupled with low energy buildings, create active homes that can support the grid through services such as peak load shifting. The EU’s strategy for energy system integration must ensure that high quality digitally enabled renovations can flourish and contribute to achieving a climate-neutral energy system. Digitally enabled renovation approaches, that provide highly accurate information on the actual energy efficiency savings delivered, are critical to ensuring a secure, stable and low carbon energy system. With the majority of today’s heating for homes coming from non electrical sources (e.g. gas heating) the electrification of heating, without a massive renovation wave, would create huge additional demands on the electricity system. To deliver a major win, EU energy policies must be structured to support energy efficiency renovation of homes as well as integrating homes as active players in the energy system. To do this the EU should: 1. Open up the Market: The current energy system dynamics are not designed for allowing low energy, digitally enabled homes to play their full role in supporting the energy system or for rewarding them for doing so. To allow service providers to be able to offer and monetise these services for homeowners, the energy system needs to be adapted to ensure that the huge societal benefits that energy efficiency renovation and active energy homes can provide are realised. 2. Create a Market for Performance, Not Measures: The EU financing and grant measures should be based on the energy efficiency performance improvements made to buildings, not the tickbox list of works delivered. 3. Incentivise Performance: The digitalisation of the economy makes it inevitable that real performance approaches will supplant the current benchmarking approaches (e.g. EPCs) as they provide a higher level of accuracy and accountability. Whilst for the renovation of single-family homes these real performance approaches are just getting started, they already have a significant role in larger buildings (e.g. schools and hospitals). EU funding should accelerate this transition by ensuring that real performance approaches get paid a “Quality Premium” in terms of grant finance and loan conditions and by trialing innovative policy approaches, such as feed-out-tariffs and power saving agreements where governments can choose to invest in 400,000 low carbon renovated homes, creating Virtual Energy Infrastructure (defined as: “The metered energy savings removed from the energy system through the deployment of energy efficiency infrastructure”) rather than building a new carbon intensive power plant. 4. Think local: Future grid approaches may be best optimised at the local or district level, with energy efficient buildings working in concert with batteries, solar PV and low carbon heating systems; this potential development should be catered for in any overall approach. Finally More for Less: Supporting digitally enabled renovations can deliver building renovations across the EU that not only scale but are focused on delivering more energy efficiency at a lower cost, whilst providing a critical support role to the energy system.
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Response to Commission Communication – "Renovation wave" initiative for the building sector

5 Jun 2020

The EU’s Renovation Wave proposals come at a time when the digital revolution can help make it a reality, allowing buildings to be transformed from climate villains at the edge of our energy system to climate champions that play an active role in supporting a secure and stable energy system. New digital approaches allow governments, finance providers, owners and tenants to finally know that the promised energy and carbon savings they invested in have been delivered. The same technologies, coupled with low energy buildings, create active homes that can support the grid through services such as peak load shifting. The EU Renovation Wave must ensure that high quality digitally enabled renovations can flourish. Energy efficiency renovation efforts have often been held back by a lack of quality in their delivery. With the final quality of a measure often invisible to the customer, the market struggles to reward quality. This then drives a market dynamic where substandard work outcompetes quality work, undermining the overall efforts to scale up energy efficiency renovation. This dynamic is known as “The Market for Lemons” for which George Akerlof won the 2001 Nobel Prize. Digitally enabled renovation approaches, that provide highly accurate information on the actual energy efficiency savings delivered, can upend this dynamic. To deliver a major win, the EU Renovation Wave must be structured to ensure “The Market for Quality” displaces the one for lemons, whilst supporting a rapid scale up. Four key elements can make this happen: 1. Create a Market for Performance, Not Measures: the financing and grant measures of the Renovation Wave should be based on the energy efficiency performance improvements made to buildings, not the tickbox list of measures delivered. 2. Incentivise Performance: the digitalisation of the economy makes it inevitable that real performance approaches will supplant the current modelled approaches (e.g. EPCs) as they provide a higher level of accuracy and accountability. Whilst for the renovation of single-family homes these real performance approaches are just getting started, they already have a significant role in larger buildings (e.g. schools and hospitals). EU funding should accelerate this transition by ensuring that real performance approaches get paid a “Quality Premium” in terms of grant finance and loan conditions and by trialing innovative policy approaches, such as feed-out-tariffs and power saving agreements where governments can choose to invest in 400,000 low carbon renovated homes, creating Virtual Energy Infrastructure (defined as: “The metered energy savings removed from the energy system through the deployment of energy efficiency infrastructure”) rather than building a new carbon intensive power plant. 3. Support Quality: whilst highly accurate real performance measurement can provide a full solution in the long term, in the short-term improved processes and quality assurance of renovation activities can deliver better outcomes. The EU funding schemes should incentivise one-stop-shops and other integrated approaches to delivering better renovation offers. 4. Open up the Market: The current energy system dynamics and state aid rules are not designed for allowing low energy, digitally enabled homes to play their full role in supporting the energy system or for rewarding them for doing so. To allow service providers to be able to offer and monetize these services for homeowners, the energy system needs to be adapted as do state aid rules to ensure that the huge societal benefits that energy efficiency renovation can provide are realised. Finally More for Less: Supporting digitally enabled renovations can deliver a Renovation Wave that not only scales but is focused on delivering more energy efficiency at a lower cost. It will create a market that rewards performance and incentivise market actors to drive up quality and drive down costs.
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Meeting with Diederik Samsom (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans)

2 Mar 2020 · The European Green Deal

Meeting with Mauro Raffaele Petriccione (Director-General Climate Action)

13 Feb 2020 · Energy efficiency measures

Meeting with Kadri Simson (Commissioner) and

30 Jan 2020 · Energy efficiency for buildings