The energy efficiency directive adopted by the European Parliament imposes strict renovation requirements on public buildings and more lenient ones for residential buildings. Housing associations and the Tallinn City Government are skeptical about the directive.

A year ago, the initial wording of the directive placed the obligation on the owner to renovate buildings in poor energy classes. In the wording now adopted, this responsibility has been removed.

"Now, the requirement applies to the entire country, meaning that nationally there must be a gradual reduction in building energy consumption. For residential buildings, the goal by 2030 is to achieve a 16 percent saving in primary energy across the entire Estonian building stock. For non-residential buildings, such as hospitals, there is an obligation to renovate the buildings in the worst energy class," explained Deputy Secretary General Ivo Jaanisoo of the Ministry of Climate.

The year 2030 is an interim milestone; the directive's goals must be met by 2050. "So a strategy in which every member state, including Estonia, accounted for the need to renovate the entire building stock by 2050," said Jaanisoo.

Both the Estonian Union of Cooperative Housing and Estonia's largest municipality, Tallinn, are skeptical of the directive.

"To simply say that by 2050 all buildings must be in good shape sounds nice and slogan-like, but it seems to me to be unrealistic, /.../ because it is tied to very large investments," commented Urmas Mardi, the head of the homeowners union.

"You always have to consider that with every obligation, reasonable resources should also be provided, and in this case, we have not understood that these resources would be sufficient to achieve these goals very quickly," said Tiit Terik, deputy mayor of Tallinn.

There are over 25,000 housing associations in Estonia, and nearly 75 percent of the population lives in apartment buildings, where the need for renovation is very significant. Approximately 14,000 apartment buildings need to be renovated. "... If we want to happily renovate all these buildings by 2050, then there needs to be the capability or help from the state," said Mardi.

"When we talk about the volume of Tallinn's housing associations, it's about 6,000 buildings, plus those buildings that are not housing associations but are either smaller or private houses, then I dare say that the majority of them today would need their energy efficiency class raised. .../ Of course, apartment buildings built during the Soviet period house a very large part of our population," said Terik.

"When a building is renovated, it is typically done for about 40 to 50 years. /.../ Now we have reached a situation where many buildings built during the Soviet era have reached the end of their designed lifespan and need to be fixed up," Jaanisoo stated.

The ministry considers achieving the goal realistic if stable funding can be ensured. Therefore, the ministry aims to prevent a situation where the inflow of support money is interrupted.

"In many regions of Estonia, it is difficult to get a loan from private banks on reasonable terms, and for this reason, national guarantees or national reconstruction loans are planned. /.../ We have at our disposal funds from European Union structural funds amounting to €330 million for apartment buildings over the next few years and €30 million for single-family homes, with the application round opening in April," Jaanisoo explained.

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