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Columnists: Chris Hamans,
Published on: 6 Sep 2016
After VW's dieselgate: EU's EPBD-gate
Over the past several months, politicians, industries and the public have been understandably upset about Volkswagen´s Dieselgate: how software installed in VW cars cheated air pollution testing schemes, causing environmental pollution and significant health risks.
One can then ask: why do we tolerate infringements to the EPBD (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive), which has a much greater health, pollution, and energy wasting impact?
Despite awareness of infringements in national building regulations, including the Dutch, most national energy performance requirements for new and existing buildings still tolerate wasting energy and polluting our atmosphere. It is not software cheating the system: the building regulations themselves enable legalised cheating!
Experts have quantified the environmental and health impacts of Dieselgate: “Volkswagen’s large-scale fraud with the software in diesel engines, 9 million fraudulent cars, sold in Europe and the US from 2009 to 2015, have emitted a cumulative amount of 526 kilo tonnes of nitrogen oxides more than was legally allowed. As a result, almost 45,000 life-years were lost due to ill health or early death. Of these, over 44,000 in Europe (and almost 700 in the United States) are associated with inhalation of fine dust due to the extra nitrogen oxides emitted by the diesel cars that where tampered with. ”
While significant, the EU and many of its Member States are allowing health and environmental harm on an even greater scale through implementation of sub-optimal building regulations. The avoided emissions by appropriately considering health care costs in EU building regulations (heating and cooling) would save 70,000 life-years annually !
The European Commission has analysed the reporting of EU Member States on their implemented energy performance requirements: 11 out of 28 reports from Member States concluded that there is a considerable gap between their calculated cost-optimal energy performance requirements and the actual minimum requirement in their national building regulations. This means that minimum regulations do not appropriately reflect EU citizen health and health costs, allowing for more energy intensive and costly buildings that release more air pollution through combustion of coal, oil and natural gas.
If, country-by-country, health care related costs would be included in the societal cost optimum evaluations it is estimated that subsequent reductions in Europe´s domestic heating and cooling energy footprint would produce:
- Economic, mostly health care-related , benefits and savings of ≥ 6.65 billion € /year
- An annual EU gain of 70,000 life-years.
The World Health Organisation noted that EU health-related economic costs of air pollution are around €940bn. Closing part of the cost-optimal gap for energy performance with improved insulation can reduce this figure by up to €40bn.
European and national politicians, NGOs and citizens are rightly indignant about Volkswagen manipulating software in Volkswagen cars. How can we then stand by while nearly twice as many victims are affected through sub-par building regulations that allow excess pollution and waste energy?
In the VW-Group, top managers are fired and claims are filed. Are the regulators responsible for the European and national energy performance demands in the built environment getting nervous? “J’accuse!”
