According to its strategic long-term vision, Europe wants to be a climate-neutral economy by 2050. Buildings play a crucial role in this vision, and they represent a sector with low-cost opportunities for high-level CO2 reduction. The challenge the renovation of the existing building stock, which must be increased to 3%/year, more than double compared to the current 1.2%/year. In this context, the ALliance for Deep RENovation (ALDREN) project has the goal of encouraging property owners to undertake renovation of existing buildings using a clear, robust, and comparable method. This paper aims to present the ALDREN approach and the ALDREN Building Renovation Passport (BRP), giving an overview of the connections and data links to other existing databases and certification schemes. To understand the data value potential of buildings, one requires reliable and trustworthy information. The Building Renovation Passport, introduced by the recent Energy Performance Building Directive (EPBD) recast 844/2018/EU, aims to provide this information. This paper presents the experience of the ALDREN BRP for non-residential buildings as well as the development procedure for its data model and the potential that this tool could have for the construction market. The ALDREN BRP has been structured into two main parts—BuildLog and RenoMap—with a common language that facilitates communication on the one hand and, on the other, the setting of renovation targets based on lifetime, operation, and user needs.

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To avoid health risks and discomfort, the European Energy Performance for Building Directive (EPBD) mandates that ''Member States should support energy performance upgrades of existing buildings that contribute to achieving a healthy indoor environment." There is, however, no widely accepted method for rating the overall level of indoor environmental quality (IEQ), although several different approaches are proposed by standards, guidelines, and certification schemes. To fill this void, a new classification rating scheme called TAIL was developed to rate IEQ in offices and hotels undergoing deep energy renovation during their normal use; the scheme is a part of the energy certification method developed by the EU ALDREN project. The TAIL scheme standardizes rating of the quality of the thermal (T) environment, acoustic (A) environment, indoor air (I), and luminous (L) environment, and by using these ratings, it provides a rating of the overall level of IEQ. Twelve parameters are rated by measurements, modelling, and observation to provide the input to the overall rating of IEQ. Their quality levels are determined primarily using Standard EN-16798-1 and World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines and are expressed by colours and Roman numerals to improve communication. The TAIL rating was shown to discriminate IEQ levels when its feasibility was examined in eleven buildings across Europe to provide support for its applicability and input for further modifications. Opportunities for using the scheme in other types of buildings and for its further development and application are discussed.

The revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EU) 2018/844 has huge potential for efficiency gains in the EU building sector, including measures that should accelerate the rate of building renovation towards more energy efficient systems. Under the 2010 EPBD, all EU countries have established independent energy performance certification systems supported by independent mechanisms of control and verification. However, current practices and tools of energy performance assessment and certification applied across Europe face several challenges. The paper presents an overview on researches and tools for the European building stock renovation process with the goal to highlight barriers, limits and benefits to increase the energy renovation rate. The main focus is to clarify the energy performance assessment and process for the certification and the introduction of the Building Renovation Passport, considering the novelty introduced by latest regulations and standards.

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