Energy Strategic Asset Management for Social Housing Operators in Europe
Improving the energy performance of the social housing stock is becoming a major need in Europe. This will only be achieved by implementing energy-efficient refurbishments of the existing buildings, which are the most energy consuming. Doing this on a large scale requires to focus on the Social Housing Operators, which are the organizations in charge of managing a housing stock of several thousand rental dwellings (except in the case of Estonia where "social housing" is composed of co-operatives of owner-occupiers).
The ESAM project is led by a consortium composed of 14 organizations from 6 countries: France, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Austria and Estonia. It involves:
Social housing Operators (SHO’s)
professional federations of SHO’s
research institures and energy agencies
The improvement of the global energy performance of the housing stock will only be possible if energy is taken into account at all steps of the management of a SHO’s housing stock. ESAM has chosen to focus on strategic asset management (also called "portfolio management"), which deals with investment decisions for the whole housing stock, and to develop methods and tools to integrate energy as a dimension in these processes: that is what Energy Strategic Asset Management refers to. The enforcement of energy performance certificates across Europe creates an obligation to gather information on the energy performance of the buildings. The ESAM project wants to make this an opportunity for SHO’s to develop an ambitious policy for energy efficiency.