4.2. Recommendations for the Taxonomy: Transformational Approach While current ambition levels for the Construction of New Buildings and Building Renovation criteria appear reasonable when looking at the current market share of buildings actually meeting the respective criteria, they are too low to successfully address the pressing challenges of a changing climate.
To improve existing and to ensure good performance of newer or renovated assets, energy monitoring and management systems are very valuable instruments and should always be accompanied by monitoring the greenhouse gas emissions and by setting target values.
The indicator ‘primary energy demand’ is not an adequate metric to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the current ambition levels for all three examined activities are not at all in line with a Paris-aligned path for the entire sector.
Ideally, the achievement of intermediate target values would be set and monitored in line with a Paris-Agreement-compatible or aligned path. In order to prevent greenwashing, minimum energy and carbon reduction values per annum could be defined to specify that a building is efficiently operated.
The so-called ‘best in class’ approach reflects current market practice by some stakeholders, but successful application depends on availability of reliable data and needs to be carefully monitored. Apart from this, a trend can be seen that banks start setting up financial products aimed at transforming promising assets into Paris-aligned assets. Their efforts and the related financial flows are not reflected in the current criteria.
For the Acquisition and Ownership criteria, both the construction and real estate and financial market could easily embrace the introduction of an additional Taxonomy class a strengthening of financial flows into transitional financial products.
Eligible buildings within this class would have to provide evidence for a ‘weaker-than-Class A’ requirement for the current carbon (or energy) performance (e.g. ‘GHG intensity better than average’), but would provide a solid investment plan for Climate protection is the topic of the hour. With the a step-by-step improvement, which would Taxonomy a way is opened for the transition of the economy be actively managed and monitored by and the financial sector. But then it is precisely this transition the owner and the bank and would be in that must be considered and stimulated. Financing energyline with 1.5°C or 2°C limit carbon budget efficient green buildings is important, but buildings that have mechanisms. the potential to become green need recognition.
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Leoni Gros, Corporate Strategy at Berlin Hyp AG
The TEG report included a potential outlook on the development of the climate change mitigation criteria, instrumental in preparing market participants. This outlook foresaw a change of metric from primary energy to GHG intensity. This could easily be implemented today as an alternative ‘GHG eligibility path’, potentially also supported by additional energy benchmarks, e.g. on final energy or useful energy.
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Such a roadmap (‘building specific climate action roadmap’) is building on the so-called ‘renovation passport’ concept, but is actually going transcending this by going towards a net-zero-GHG target within a specified limit. With the current trend of rising carbon prices in Europe and the forecast of further dramatic increases in future, the longterm planning of renovation measures and necessary steps to reach carbon net zero is essential.
