To what extent do 'ambitious' scenarios of energy demand in the building stock reflect COP21 Paris targets?

摘要

COP21 led to an agreed target of keeping the increase in global average temperature below 2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels. The EU-contribution to this target will require GHG-emission reductions of at least 80-95 % from 1990-levels until 2050. Due to the high potential for decarbonisation, the building stock will have to achieve at least the same level of reduction. Policy makers are asked to develop a corresponding framework. Important for assisting decision makers in this context are policy driven scenarios.The research questions of this paper are: (1) Do long-term scenarios (and in particular those labelled as ambitious) of energy demand in buildings reflect the COP21 target? (2) If not: What are reasons for the gap? (3) What can we learn for policy making?The method builds on following steps: (1) Analysis of GHG-emission reduction in scenarios from the policy driven bottom-up model Invert/EE-Lab carried out recently for various European countries in several EU and national projects (e.g. ZEBRA2020, progRESsHEAT, Tender for DG Energy on Mapping of Heating/Cooling, etc.); (2) compare scenarios among each other and analyse whether the scenarios lead to an achievement of GHG-emission reductions in the range of 80-95 % until 2050; (3) identify reasons for possible gaps in GHG-emission reductions like insufficient stringency of building codes, deficient economic incentives etc. and (4) derive conclusions regarding policy making.Results show that scenarios labelled as being “ambitious” e.g. in ZEBRA2020 for several EU MSs achieve GHG-emission reductions of 56 %-95 % until 2050, but only three of them above 85 %. The reason is that policies have been developed together with policy makers, who were not willing to go beyond certain stringency of modelled instruments. In particular, this was the case for regulatory instruments which turn out to be essential for achieving ambitious climate targets.