[Event] World Sustainable Energy Days 2015

The World Sustainable Energy Days (WSED), one of Europe’s largest annual conferences in this field, offered a unique combination of events on sustainable energy. The 2015 conference, which was held from 25 – 27 February in Wels/Austria, attracted more than 750 participants from 64 countries

One of the key events in the program was the European Nearly Zero Energy Buildings Conference. The conference started with a session on policy and market update, where Paula Rey Garcia from the European Commission, presented an update on European building policies.

Peter Graham, Executive Director of the Global Buildings Performance Network, provided a global overview of the status of nZEBs, concluding that more needs to be done to mainstream nZEBs outside of Europe and the United States. Moreover, success in Europe will be a critical factor in demonstrating to the rest of the world that nZEBs are scalable. This was followed by a session on nZEB refurbishment and financing including best practice examples. Oliver Rapf, Executive Director of the Buildings Performance Institute Europe, presented challenges and benefits of having a comprehensive renovation strategy towards nZEB levels.

On Friday, a workshop on “Policy Implementation in Member States & Regions” offered the opportunity for discussion among European building experts. The conference came to an end on Friday afternoon with a half-day excursion to two nZEB buildings in the surrounding area: an office nZEB building with biomass heating and cooling and a kindergarten in passive building standard, with PV, district heating and ventilation with heat recovery were visited.

The European Nearly Zero Energy Buildings conference was organised as part of the IEE-project “SUSTAINCO“.

The presentations of the 2015 edition are available at the following link.

The World Sustainable Energy Days 2016 will take place from 24-26 February 2016.