Indoor environmental quality as a mean to catalyse the acceptance and implementation of the major new EPBD provisions

Panel: 7. Make buildings policies great again

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Vivian Dorizas, BPIE, Belgium
Maarten De-Groote, BPIE
Jonathan Volt, BPIE

Abstract

Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) has a direct effect on health, comfort, wellbeing and productivity. Considering that people spend 90% of their time indoors, it is crucial that building legislation ensures sufficient levels of IEQ which can lead to healthy and comfortable indoor environments. Not addressing these inadequacies will be a missed opportunity and come with huge societal costs.

This study summarises the major opportunities to reflect the importance of IEQ in national and EU legal framework. The paper discusses how the aspects of IEQ, and indicators for the evaluation of the indoor environment can be integrated in relevant legislations.

The current EU legislations disclose several weaknesses as they do not sufficiently provide concrete details on how to address and achieve acceptable IEQ. The real opportunity now lies at national level, and it is therefore critical to develop approaches for the integration of IEQ in national policy frameworks.

To achieve this, four areas of opportunities are identified:

(i) Long-term Renovation Strategies,

(ii) Energy Performance Certificate (EPC),

(iii) Smart readiness Indicator and

(iv) Compliance and Quality control measures.