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“Ecobuilding Club” Panorama of the Italian situation in Ecobuilding field

Anna Danzi FINCO

The Federation of Italian Building Material Producers

International final dissemination Meeting – Paris december the 3rd2009

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FINCO Overview

FINCO is the “umbrella” organisation of the Italian Building Material Producers and other minor sectors linked to construction

FINCO is a Federation made by 31 National Associations of Manufacturers that represent about 4.000 companies and 500.000 workers

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Represented Sectors

• Aggregates

• Thermal insulating materials

• Steel Construction and Products

• Expanded Clay

• Curtain and Sun Shading Systems

• Aluminium Curtain Wall and Windows

• Marble and Marble Equipments

• Ceramics

• Lime, Gypsum and Mortar

• Glass and Plastic Roofs

• Asphalt and Bitumen

• Systems to evacuate Heat and Smoke

• Security Devises

• Distributors of building materials and construction site machines

• Installers of technological equipments

Economic Weight of the Sector

• In the Italian economy, the whole Construction Sector produces about 10% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product )

• Almost half of this 10% is made by manufacturers for construction

• 90% of the Italian manufacturers are SMEs

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FINCO Tasks

1. Provide services to Associations

2. Represent Sectors towards Public and Private Institutions

3. Realize projects to improve the sector

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3. Realize Projects to improve the sector

• Studies on sector’s trend• Actions to improve the quality of the cities

(Destroy suburbs in order to build up in a better way)• Initiatives to develop and reinforce:

Industrial construction systemQualification of processesEnterprise culture

• Initiatives on Energy Saving(ex: White Book on building energy consumption; promotion

and support of energetic requalification of building; etc)• Participation in environmental projects

(Like, ECOBUILDING CLUB project)

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Eco-building Project

“Eco-Building International Club for advanced European sustainable energy technology dissemination in Europe and China”

Eco-building Project

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• International network of subjects working in the eco-building sector

• Good link between Industry and Research in order to find and spread the best results among the innovative and efficient products and systems able to reduce energy building consumption

• Great tool to collect and to disseminate information in eco-building sector www.ecobuilding-club.net

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Project Partners

1 ENEA Italia2 ISNOVA Italia3 FINCO Italia4 CRES Grecia5 EBHE Grecia6 ADEME Francia7 ZERI Cina8 SEC Bulgaria9 GPREC Grecia10 DTI Danimarca11 BI Danimarca

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Why it is important the participation of a Federation, like

FINCO, in a wide international initiative like

Eco-Building Club project ?

The main point

The easy answer

Because the involvement of the Federation and the connected Associations in the

environment initiatives is great

and

Finco is working a lot in order to support good initiatives able to:

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Finco’s Strategy for the Environment

• Reduce the CO2 emission during the production process

• Reduce the CO2 emission and energy consumption in house management

• Develop the culture of saving energy and natural resources

• Improve construction quality • Promote a sustainable development of

construction sector

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Why the construction sector is interested to environment

The construction sector is one of the main subject in the environment field because:

• It uses up non renewable resources

• It influences the availability of soil

• It consumes energy during all its life cycle: production of materials, management of the buildings, demolition and reuse of raw and secondary materials

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What else pushes the sector

The emergency at environment level it is important, but there is something else:

• High energy costs

• Need to apply Kyoto Protocol

• Need to work for new goal of “20-20-20 Strategy”

• Will to follow a new business

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The 20-20-20 Strategy

On march the 9th 2007 the UE Council decided a new object to reach in environment field by 2020:

1. Grow up to 20% the renewable energies

2. Grow up to 20% the energy efficiency

3. Reduce of 20% of gasses that produce global warming

4. Grow up to 20% the production of bio-fuel

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What happens in Italy

In Italy the strategy to fight pollution and save energy in building sector started long time ago

because:

• Italy imports more than 85% of energy from abroad

and because

• More than 40% of national energy is used in buildings (materials production and displacement, building construction, management, demolition, etc.)

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Italy: Energy saving Legislation/1

• Law 373/1976

(Thermal Insulation, maximum power of installations)

• Law 10/1991

(Save and rational use of energy)

• Decree July 2005(Regulation of energy consumption throw energy dispersion

levels - application of L. 10/91)

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Italy: Energy saving Legislation/2

• Legislative Decree 192/2005(National implementation of European Directive 2002/91/CE - Energy

Performance of Buildings)

• Legislative Decree 311/2006(Integration of D.L.vo 192/05 – It introduced a mandatory energy

certification of buildings)

• Presidential Decree 59/2009(Calculation and minimum building energy performance )

• Regulation 26 June 2009(Guide Line to certify energy performance of buildings)

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Italy: Energy saving Legislation/3

• Financial Law 2007 and 2009(Economic support to energetic renew of building- tax reduction of 55%

and VAT of 10% on materials)

• Local Regulation(Regions and Cities -188- approved buildings regulation to improve the

energy quality of cities)

• “Project House 2” - April 2009(Agreement between Government and Regions to demolish houses and

rebuild them with an increase of 35% of volume if low energy houses)

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What’s wrong

It is very difficult to check the application of new legislation and to verify the real saving of energy results.

• The Official National Census in 2001 declared that in Italy there were (at that time) 27.268.880 of houses (29,4 Million in 2008)

• 2/3 of them were built before the Law 373/76 (without any criteria to save energy)

• The medium energy consumption in a house is about 160Kwh/m2; in 2020 for the new house will be required to be 80 Kwh/m2

• In the next years there will be less than 300.000 new houses per year (less than the 1% of the existing houses): this means that to reach “20-20-20” goal (128 Kwh/m2) it is necessary also to renew 600.000 houses per year (*)

(*) Fonte Cresme

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The Crisis/1

After ten years of growth, in 2008, the construction sector started a negative trend:

In 2009 the decrease in construction investment is expected between -8,1% and -9,4% (*)

The reduction is more or less the same in all the construction sectors: New private houses, Retrofit (old houses), New public buildings, New private building

In 2009 the decrease of building material production is expected between -18% and -34% (*) (it depends on the products)

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The Crisis/2

What is going to happen in 2010?

The decrease in construction investment is expected between -5,8 % and – 7,1% (*)

With a wide application of the “Project House 2” the decrease could be between – 2,6 % and – 3,9 % (*)

For sure investments in retrofit, in save energy measures and installation of renewable energy sources will lead the trend

(*) Fonte Cresme-Ance

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Eco- building to overcome the Crisis

The crisis numbers and the needs of the environment (and the people health) can be combined for a positive change of the situation:

• It is clear the political will to overcome the crisis and to answer to environment demand coming at national and international level

• It is clear the importance of Mass Media to help people to better understand the situation

• It is clear the support that Universities, Agencies for Energies, Research Institutes etc. can give to develop new tools

• It is clear a new role that Designers, Contractors, Materials Producers, Certifiers can have in the future on these topics

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Solutions and limits

To overcome the crisis and improve energy performance of buildings the “must” is INNOVATION of: products, processes, systems.

The Italian manufactures because of:

• enterprise size (small and medium)

• strong link with the local market

• a not easy access to credit bank

have some difficulties to invest in innovation, even if…..

A lot of them do!

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The new market of energy saving/1

To save energy it is important to act on the different parts of the existing buildings because the best performance is of the whole system

In the last five years

33% of the Italian families did something to improve the energy consumption in their houses (replacement of windows, roofs, insulations of walls, installation of solar and photovoltaic panels etc.)

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The new market of energy saving/2

In the next 5-10 years a recent research showed that (*):

• 23 Millions of windows are going to be changed

• 140 Millions of walls are going to be improved (coats, curtain walls, insulating plasters etc)

• 300 Millions of roofs are going to be renewed

• 424 Millions of attics are going to be improved

• 15 Millions of installations will be substituted

(*) Fonte Cresme

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Thaks for your attention

This is our website:

www.fincoweb.org

Mail to: a.danzi@fincoweb.org