EU RECOVERY AND RESILIENCE GRANTS FOR BUILDING RENOVATION

Publication date:December 15, 2021

From the inception, we’ve followed the progression of the Recovery and Resilience Facility because it’s total worth is € 728.3 billion of which € 338 billion in direct grants to member states who in turn are under legal obligation to spend 37% of the package on climate objectives ... and buildings are the top climate problem.

We reported on the building renovation aspects of some national recovery plans submitted to the Commission but until now we couldn’t get a full picture of all member states and in particular of the portion of the allocation specifically devoted to buildings.

That’s still not possible for the full 27 because the Commission is holding the money back from two member states for rule of law reasons and others submitted their plans only recently and haven’t been processed yet or have caretaker governments that can’t cut the final deal with the Commission. Nonetheless, the 22 member states who got across the line provide a good enough picture.

All 22 member states actually spent more than the legally required 37% of the package on climate objectives. However, ‘climate objectives’ includes everything. The three pertinent questions are:

1.    How much money went to buildings?

2.    What kind buildings?

3.    How much went to privately-owned buildings?

By exploring the dedicated Commission site, we were able to produce the two tables below:

•    The first table gives, for each state, the total grant, the percentage of the grant used for climate objectives and the amount allocated to buildings. Isolating the building information wasn’t easy, and the sums obtained may not be completely exact in some cases, but any variation will not be significant.

•    The second table gives the nature of each country’s building expenditure.

You will see the specifics for your own country, but generally speaking:

•    The amounts allocated to buildings are significant, especially considering that they’ll be spent quickly.

•    The big winners are private housing* followed by government buildings. Social housing gets less, SMEs much less (CZ, DK, LV), and large corporate nothing at all. 
*   Private housing generally. Only a minority specifically state that they target private energy poverty or, for Estonia, “areas with lower property values and more difficult access to               renovation finance”, but others may do so anyway. LV, RO and SK will also support historic houses.

•    Most of the spending is on building renovation (disparity concerning depth of renovation / amount of energy saving achieved) and boiler replacement.

Full EPF Secretariat report including Commission site and EPF Secretariat tables under epf21-86 of 09.12.2021