In Europe, the building construction sector accounts for around 40% of energy consumption. From 2018 all new public buildings throughout the EU must comply with the Low Energy Standard. How can municipalities build in a sustainable, energy-efficient way? Which partners and strategies are required for implementation? Examples of what communities are already doing to reduce costs and energy use and increase their quality of life will be discussed at the workshop entitled “Sustainable building and renovation: from strategy to implementation” to be held on 17 October 2014 in the Slovenian town of Idrija.

Bruno Summer, Mayor of St. Gerold in Austria, will be presenting the Vorarlberg’s first public building to be certified as a passive house and will talk about sustainable building construction in Alpine municipalities, local value creation and the need for co-operation with partners. Bruno Dujič, an expert on building in wood – the raw material of the Alps – will be speaking about wood as an opportunity and a challenge.

This interactive “marketplace of ideas” will allow participants to exchange knowledge and experiences of sustainable strategies and advisory packages for municipalities with experts and practitioners from the entire Alpine region, with examples from Italy, Slovenia and France. The French city of Chambéry will be presenting its service package, “build, plan and retrofit sustainably”, which incorporates findings from the MountEE project.

The event is being organised by the “Alpine Town of the Year” Association in Idrija (the 2011 Alpine Town of the Year) with the participation of CIPRA in the context of the MountEE project, which is in turn co-financed by the EU’s “Intelligent Energy Europe” programme. Deadline for registration is 10 October 2014.

Source and further information:
http://www.alpenstaedte.org/de/aktuell/veranstaltungen/4984, www.mountee.eu, http://cipra.org/de/climalp