UNDP Belarus supports the Government of the Republic of Belarus in a wide range of areas. They all fall within the National Sustainable Socio-Economic Development Strategy till 2020, which was approved by the Government on 22 June 2004. UNDP plays an important role as a partner to the Government of Belarus in energy efficiency improvement policy and programs. In particular, UNDP has supported the Government of Belarus through capacity building and expert advice to achieve its GDP energy intensity reduction target through the project ?Improving Energy Efficiency in Residential Buildings in the Republic of Belarus? funded by GEF under its Climate Change Focal Area Strategy.
Belarus lacks domestic energy resources, and has thereby to import around 90% of energy consumed in the country. The housing stock consumes over 40% of the total amount of energy used for heating and hot water supply. In the beginning of 2013, the Belarus? housing stock totals about 242 million square meters of residential buildings, including about 170 million square meters of old buildings which were constructed before 1994 according to the old Soviet practices and norms when annual specific consumption of heat energy varied from 150 to 200 kWh/m2. Since that time, the housing construction standards changed significantly, and for the time being energy efficiency improvement measures in this sector resulted in reduction of annual heat energy specific consumption by about 100 kWh/m2 in newly constructed buildings. The recent national standards stipulate annual specific consumption of heat energy to be not higher than 60 kWh/m2. To facilitate construction of residential buildings in line with the said new standard, Belarus started production of new for the country energy efficient insulating materials, new thermal energy regulators and meters and introduced new types of window design to be used in construction of new buildings. Under this practice 5-6 million square meters of new residential buildings are annually put into service in the country in the past few years.
Nevertheless, as indicated by many experts and acknowledged by the Government of Belarus, the applied measures only partially removed existing barriers and the 60 kWh/m2 standard does not reflect the energy saving potential in the housing construction sector, whilst many EU countries are developing new regulatory documents, which envisage transition to construction of buildings with space-heating energy consumption of less than 30 kWh/m2 a year with the best achieved engineering solutions leading to about 15 kWh/m2 a year. Therefore, the Ministry of Architecture and Construction with support of the State Standardization Committee?s Department for Energy Efficiency have implemented a couple of pilot projects to demonstrate that there is still large energy savings potential while introducing some other state-of-the-art techniques into building construction practice. According to these projects and best European practices, the energy efficiency improvement solutions can be found in innovative building design principles, such as the optimal constructive-technological and space-and-planning solutions based on integrated energy performance of a building, the combination of heating and ventilating functions with forced ventilation and heat recovery up to 80% from the exhaust air, the heat recovery from drainage waters, the solar water heating, the utilization of ground heat by a heat pump, the automatic regulation of heat and hot water consumption, the use of thorough thermo-vision study to identify actual heat-shielding characteristics of the building envelope, and other applicable energy efficiency improvement technologies and approaches.
Today, the Belarusian Government sets the objective to move towards mass construction of energy efficient buildings in Belarus that is consistent with the new EU standards. Nevertheless, despite the availability of technical means and materials and capacities to apply new technologies, there are still certain technical, legislative, institutional, economic and technological barriers to improving energy efficiency in residential buildings in Belarus.
The aim of the project, planned for 4 years, is to reduce energy consumption during the construction and operation of residential buildings and a corresponding reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The focus of the project will be devoted to develop and ensure effective implementation of new methods of designing of residential buildings and construction standards with related energy certification schemes efficiency.
In particular, the project will help achieve the following objectives:
Provide support to strengthen the legal and regulatory framework, as well as mechanisms to enforce the legislation for improving the energy efficiency in the building sector; Facilitate the development of enhanced capacity of the Belarusian specialists to implement and effectively enforce the new energy efficiency building standards and construction norms; Implement pilot projects to demonstrate the energy and cost-saving potential of new energy efficiency measures on the example of three residential buildings in two Belarusian cities; Ensure awareness of industry experts and the general public on energy efficiency in the residential sector; Establish monitoring mechanisms and replication to ensure the reproduction of the results of the project in Belarus and abroad.
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