Suchergebnisse

This paper presents the overall status, characteristics, and policy framework of the housing sector and the initiatives towards energy efficiency in residential buildings in Belgium in order to assess the market demand for EuroPACE - an on-tax financing scheme for home retrofits. In fact, there are over 5 million residential buildings in Belgium. In 2015, the construction of new buildings represented 44% of the building stock, while renovated buildings accounted for 56%. Moreover, there is a high degree of transformation of old buildings - office buildings or commercial buildings - into residential dwellings. What is also important is that Belgium is a largely urbanised country, with over 83% of the population living in urban areas. Furthermore, 62% of the building stock was built before 1970, and only 41% of dwellings have wall insulation, 36% have fully double-glazed windows, and 58% have roof insulation. These poor insulation figures show that the need for the renovation of the building stock is high. What is more, energy prices are among the highest in the EU and 20% of Belgians are experiencing energy poverty. About 22% of the total energy consumption of the country comes from buildings. To push this renovation further, Belgium must overcome a few barriers - notably financial and technical - before achieving energy efficiency in residential buildings. Barriers related to lack of interest from the authorities are not as significant, as the country and its three regions (the Flemish Region - or Flanders, the Brussels-Capital Region, and the Walloon Region - or Wallonia), which are responsible for the development and implementation of housing and Energy efficiency policies, seem committed to implement initiatives for energy efficiency adapter to local conditions and challenges. For instance, financial support measures such as green certificates, housing bonuses, and renovation premiums aim at boosting energy efficiency in existing buildings. In order to achieve its main objective, this paper analyses the residential building stock (age, size, quality, value, ownership, amount, as well as practical details relative to housing), the characteristics of its users (household composition, income level, and division between urban/rural areas, among others), the characteristics of its energy spending and production (energy price, sources, building energy levels, and energy poverty, among others), as well as the different initiatives and policies implemented at the national and regional level to reduce energy consumption and encourage owners to invest in more energy efficient options when buying or renovating their dwelling. The conclusion of the paper presents a brief Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis of the housing sector in order to evaluate the feasibility of an on-tax financing scheme such as the one proposed by EuroPACE.

This article responds to Peck's call for a heterodox economic analysis of markets that is sensitive to their sociality and spatiality with Polanyi's work as a starting point. It is argued that while Polanyi's concept of the socially embedded economy offers a useful heuristic for apprehending the social foundations of economic activity, his analysis exhibits 'market fetishism' – a tendency to treat markets as things in and of themselves, without a proper appreciation of their inherently social foundations – and that this is reflected in broader scholarly discourses with respect to markets. Thus, it is argued, we need to augment Polanyi's framework with other heterodox economic insights. The article outlines a four-step approach to 'de-fetishizing' markets. First, the article foregrounds the specifically capitalist nature of the global economy, and the 'unique system of market dependence' to which capitalist social relations give rise. Second, it is argued that de-fetishizing markets requires that an agent-centred approach be adopted. Rather than viewing markets as 'things' it is argued that they are most usefully understood as the interactions between agents, the most significant of which, within the contemporary global economy, is the large capitalist firm. Third, the interaction between such agents is structured by pervasive frameworks of rules. Fourth, it is argued that markets are inherently spatial phenomena. They are spatially constituted and contribute to the production of space.

Shallow geothermal energy (SGE) technology is an emerging market and is poised to sustain growth based on its feasibility around the globe irrespective of terrain. This can be duly attributed to awareness of public towards climate change and need to switch to renewables in addition to long term objectives of government policies for decarbonizing residential energy consumption with special focus on heating and cooling. The deliverable aims at a public understanding of the latest trends in the SGE market at global, European, and selected national scales. This report sets a platform for strategizing future business model development and supporting the exploitation activities. The reports also address the key issues that is set to influence the GEOFIT acceptance which starts with an overview of SGE systems and current trends in worldwide canvas and European perspective with special focus on four identified pilot countries. This report further analysis the barriers, the value chain and the importance of synergy between different stakeholders that will ease the adoption/acceptance of GEOFIT in SGE or the heating and cooling market. The preliminary market potential assessment sets a foundation to further assess the pilot site countries under a business case format in subsequent months of the project. The GSHP competitor analysis was carried out based on functionality of well-known GSHP brands available in the European market. The scope of this deliverable is a general overview of SGE-related topics that serves as a foundation to map the market analysis and market watch activities within GEOFIT to exploitation planning by going deeper into each key exploitable result as a distinctive market to be explored.

The document shows the activities of market research performed in the second half of the first year of the project. Differently from the initial deliverable (D8.1): the focus of the market research has been to study the specific costs of kidney and melanoma cancer, and the possible barriers and success criteria to market to then continue the CAPABLE roadmap to the adoption following the CEHRES method presented in D8.1. The document also presents an update of the technology vigilance, which also contains a specific selection of solutions that are relevant competitors of CAPABLE and a study of the existing solution in the 2 hospitals of CAPABLE (ICSM and NKI-NVL). The document also presents an updated version of the Consortium IPR strategy and questionnaire interviews to be launched next year to start exploiting interests from key decision makers. ; This deliverable is a part of a project receiving funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 875052