INSTRUCT

Inspiration

Construction is a key component of the EU strategy and, faces huge pressure from EU and national regulations. Buildings represent 40% of primary energy consumption in the EU and between 30 and 40% of CO2 emissions depending on national energy mixes. Improving the EE of European buildings is a key step in achieving the 2030 and 2050 EU energy and CO2 emission targets.

The Green Deal strategy, which aims to halt environmental degradation, calls for appropriate measures at many levels: from legislative changes to initiatives in specific sectors. A particularly important sector is the construction industry which provides 18 million direct jobs and contributes to about 9% of the EU’s GDP. By making the sector more competitive, resource efficient and sustainable it will significantly contribute to green transformations and to achieving the EU targets.

Innovation

In this context, the INSTRUCT project aims to introduce changes in the requirements for construction workers and to prove the close link between energy skills and the energy performance as well as the effect of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, this innovative project also supports legislative changes, thanks to which energy skills will need to be confirmed by certificates, desired by investors.

Together with its partners, LIST will work on quantitative and qualitative evidence that corroborate the correlation between skills and education and energy performance and quality as well as on new legislative frameworks enabling reliance on skilled workers in public/private procurement. Real-world demonstrations of the usefulness and ease of use of the deployed instruments for recognition of energy skills and qualifications will also be set up. Finally, the project will develop dissemination and awareness raising actions in consortium members countries, scaled up to the wider Europe.

Impact

LIST intends to create a complete operational framework to increase the number of skilled building professionals and blue-collar workers over the whole value chain (both for renovations and new constructions), and offer a set of services to support raising awareness of home and building owners and tenants about the benefits of sustainable energy skills, and public authorities for the development of new legislative frameworks, e.g. requirements for skilled workers in public procurement.

The top-down and bottom-up activities in the INSTRUCT project are intended to eliminate the existing shortage of construction skills and thus to create buildings that are 100% energy efficient.