Gödöllő Climate Club
March 2010
Zsuzsanna Király, an expert of the Energy Club, was our guest at our 18 March club. She talked about the energy certificate of buildings and answered our numerous questions. Below you can read the summary of her presentation and our discussion.
In Europe about 40% of the total amount of energy is used in buildings – that is why the EU focuses on the energy efficiency of residential buildings and public institutions, and it is for this reason that the building energy directive was set up, which calls for the compulsory introduction of energy certificates in every member state.
In Hungary the 176/2008. governmental decree regulates who must have this certificate and in which cases. In the case of new buildings the certificate has been compulsory in order to obtain the permission to live since 1 January 2009. From 1 January 2012 the certificate will be necessary to sell any flat or house or to rent them long-term (for a year or longer). It is always the responsibility of the seller or the owner to obtain the certificate.
What does an energy certificate show?
Category: Most importantly it informs you about the technical condition of the particular building: insulation, heating system, heat loss and based on all this the expected yearly energy consumption. If the condition of the building fulfils the currently used technical requirements, the building will belong to category ’C’ according to the certificate categorization (see table). If it is better, that is, energetically it is more efficient, less energy is needed for its operation (heating, cooling, water heating), it may be categorized as ’A+’, ’A’ or ’B’.
|
Energy efficiency category |
Energy consumption of the building compared to the required value |
Naming |
|
A+ |
<55% |
Very energy efficient |
|
A |
56–75% |
Energy efficient |
|
B |
76–95% |
Better than required |
|
C |
96–100% |
Fulfils the requirement |
|
D |
101–120% |
Nearing the requirement |
|
E |
121–150% |
Better than average |
|
F |
151–190% |
Average |
|
G |
191–250% |
Nearing average |
|
H |
251–340% |
Weak |
|
I |
341%< |
Unsatisfactory |
Recommendations: An important part of the certificate is the recommendation of the certifying expert who gives advice on energy efficient use and at the same time points out the heat technical and building engineering problems of the house and gives advice on modernization. You can also get information about which energy category the building will belong to if the advice is followed and the building is modernized.
Is it worth obtaining the energy certificate even if it is not yet compulsory?
Having the certificate may increase the value of our property since an independent expert certifies its energy efficiency. It is important to know that nowadays a category ’C’ flat fulfils the requirements, however, an average Hungarian flat is usually in category ’E’ or ’F’.
With its recommendations the certificate gives guidance on how energy can be saved and how the house or flat should be renovated and modernized.
Who can issue the certificate?
Certificates can be issued by experts listed by the Hungarian Chamber of Engineers or the Hungarian Chamber of Architects. Engineers who have passed the necessary professional exams can be listed. The list of experts can be found on www.mmk.hu and www.mek.hu.
Sources and further information:
Label, energy certificate: www.lakcimke.hu (information guidance can be downloaded here)
Energy Club: www.energiaklub.hu
Club carbon footprint
Related to the March Club a total of 118.3 kg of CO2 was emitted with the following proportions:
We have also calculated how many kilos of carbon dioxide we emitted related to the Clubs (see graph) except for the first Club (October 2009) and how many oak trees could bind this amount.
As the graph below also shows so far 644.05 kg of CO2 has been emitted related to the events of the Club. According to the data of Energy Club one fully-grown, healthy (about 100 cubic meters of foliage volume) oak tree can bind 68 kg of CO2 in one year. Based on this figure, 10 oak trees are needed to bind the emissions of our Club!
The carbon footprints of the clubs are calculated with the Energy Club event-footprint calculator
Climate Club 18th March 2010
PROGRAMME
Introduction: welcome,
Club materials handed out to those who did not come last time
Attendance sheet
I. Energy Club
II. What did they measure at home? Collecting data
What questions and problems did they have?
III. Climate audit feedback + eco-footprint
Positive results – what are we good at?
In what areas do we want to develop and improve?
1. Vadovics and Fitrian families
2. What were the goals? What did they achieve? What do they want?
What obstacles do they expect?
3. Club result – combined
IV. Questionnaire about the Club
V. Closing
Next meeting: 14th April (József Feiler – passive house)
What to do until the next meeting:
§ Reading and registering measure meter data
Before Club:
ECO FOOTPRINT measurement opportunity
Consumption reduction attempts of the Fitrian Family – Part 3
(Basic information: We live in Pest in the 7th District on the third floor of a 100-year-old block of flats. My younger Sister and the three of us (Orsi, Rian and the two-year-old Mirkó, who absolutely counts as one as far as consumption is concerned ;-) ) live in a 45-square-meter flat. )
Since our January ’report’ we have had a few positive changes in Hernád Street again:
- In the kitchen one of the evenings the old light bulb finally burnt out. First we replaced it with an energy saving bulb but the light was so low and it was so dark that we almost gave up cooking. Then it got very light so now it is enough for the whole kitchen (originally we have two lamps but now we are using one only) so now except for the light bulb in the bath all the bulbs are energy saving in the flat (7 out of 8)!
- Using the light bulb calculator on www.energiakalkulator.hu we calculated that with these 7 light bulbs we save about 33,000 HUF annually!
- We’ve actually caught the “Calculator fever”... J So, besides the Climate Club carbon calculator we uploaded the latest meter data on www.egymozdulat.hu as well. Our electricity and gas consumption in February was more or less the same as in January. The water consumption, however, although slightly – decreased further (daily average 0.25 m3)! In the past two weeks we have not used heating. This warm weather has been very useful, even a bit too warm now...
- In the evening of 27 March we visited my Father and at half past 8 in the evening we walked up to the Eagle statue together to have a better view from up there to see what the city of Tatabánya, which is famous for its climate group, does now for the Earth Hour Switch Off Your Light. Weeell......The lights around the statue of the bird went off at exactly 8.30pm but apart from that NOTHING happened. We were walking in the forest. We were a bit upset but the atmosphere was really good. A lot of young people spent the night next to the fire warming up and the number of people walking on the ’mountain of the city’ so late at night was much higher than usual.
- Reading books on climate change and climate protection really changes your attitude through raising your awareness of issues less well-known. Recently I have been reading such a book after borrowing it from the GreenDependent library (George Marshall – Carbon Detox), so finally I understood why the weather will be more changeable due to the higher CO2 content of the atmosphere.
However, the most surprising change concerning the carbon dioxide emission of our household was inspired by a completely different book: the well-known Shogun.
Rian, my partner, got James Clavell’s bestseller novel for Christmas. In Indonesia the book is not as popular as here and he has never seen the film. What makes the Japanese story of the 17th century interesting is not CO2 emission, still indirectly it helped a lot in our family’s diet reform! J The disgust Japanese people feel towards meat and the enthusiastic description of the English main character about how fresh and strong he feels thanks to the diet of the samurais made a big impression on Rian. Those days in Japan people ate only fish and vegetables maybe because of the regulations of the Buddhist religion or because there were not enough fields to feed other animals… (??)
When Rian arrived in Europe three years ago, he was amazed at seeing the choice of meat products and the ’low’ prices. In the first 26 years of his life he ate beef twice a year and chicken once or twice a month. In Indonesia this is normal. Meat is unaffordable for the majority of people!
Of course, they eat more fish... But see that meat was plentiful in Europe and Hungary, he felt like ’catching up’. He enjoyed tasting all kinds of meat dishes. Then he read James Clavell and as John Blackthorne, the main character slowly became a samurai, our Indonesian main character slowly returned to the way of the ’radically little meat consumers’. Sometimes the motivation to change your life really comes from an unexpected direction. J
Some extra comments in small text:
Having mentioned Japanese fish consumption, it is important to know that today’s immoderateness is typical of their lifestyle, too: due to their diet customs several fish species are nearing extinction. And they are not too friendly to whales either. You could just hear in the news that they have absolutely no intention of reducing the yearly amount of blue fin tuna that they catch and later serve as luxury food, even though numerous worried organization demand that the species should be saved.
As you could read on Index, the news site last September: ’If there are no urgent and radical changes, soon there will be no fish in the seas and oceans. This is not some hippy-style daydreaming barefoot crying out but a fact like global warming, which is not a topic of doubt anymore among serious scientists. In the past few decades several salt water fish species have experienced a radical decrease in their numbers. The extent of decrease is especially serious in the case of large predatory animals (like tuna also popular in our region, or sharks eaten up in Asia); in the case of many species it exceeds 90 per cent. Environment pollution is also responsible for this even if to a smaller extent. What really led to this sad situation is that mankind simply wolfed down everything delicious from the water’.
( Márton Bede http://index.hu/velemeny/menonemmeno/2009/09/22/halat_enni_nem_meno/ )
If you want to eat fish, eat local fish! (About Hungarian organic fish: http://www.tudatosvasarlo.hu/cikkek/848 )
Orsi Antal / GreenDependent
The setting up of the Gödöllő Climate Club was supported by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission in the framework of the “Changing Behaviour” programme.
