Reasons for the growing popularity of energy efficient buildings in Poland

Recently the so called “green”, ecological or sustainable architecture is becoming more and more popular. Energy efficiency of buildings is one of the aspects of this kind of architecture. In our country, the main reason for the growing popularity of the energy efficient buildings is the new buildings’ legislation. The new buildings’ regulations set up much higher standards for energy performance of buildings than the previous ones. Poland, like all other EU member states, was forced to introduce new energy standards for buildings, by the implementation of the Directive 2010/31/EU. The prospective standards for all new buildings in Poland are on the level of today’s low energy buildings. The purpose of introducing such high standards is to reduce the amount of energy used by the building industry in Europe. According to EEA report one of the results of climate change in our region would be longer and more severe heat periods, and some adaptation action should be taken. Probably, according to the new legislation, too little emphasis was put on the overheating risk of the buildings. At present, in Poland, other reasons for constructing energy efficient buildings are of minor meaning. Especially the financial encouragements for small investors are not effective enough. The situation looks better in the area of public buildings. Institutional investors have more possibilities for obtaining financial support, which is encouraging enough. Also, the obligation to inform the public about the results of the energy performance certificate is not respected fully. This obligation could help to increase the environmental conscience of investors. So there is still much room for improvement.