”Warmer in winter, cooler in summer. Not enough!” Thermal rehabilitation of buildings doesn't cut Romanians' bills and doesn't improve their quality of life

Bianca Dragomir

Is insulating Romania’s apartment blocks enough to lower utility bills and improve residents’ living standards?

In Bucharest’s Sector 3, many blocks have undergone rehabilitation. Large silver plaques mark the year and funding source, alongside a friendly message from the mayor: „With friendship!”

On Calea Vitan, at No. 205, Block 41 has had its façade redone for several years and, more recently, photovoltaic panels installed on the roof. „It’s better, it’s not as cold in winter anymore, and we don’t have mold. For a year now we’ve also had solar panels,” says a resident.

When it comes to bills, however, the answer is less clear: „We can’t really tell, since prices keep going up.”

This is the story of many rehabilitated blocks in Bucharest. Comfort has improved to some extent, but the promised savings on utilities aren’t felt.

What’s more, residents don’t believe the air has become cleaner or that their buildings are more environmentally friendly: „The air isn’t cleaner. How could it be, when in this sector there’s a construction pit dug on every corner,” says Mihai, a Sector 3 resident.

The information board announcing the rehabilitation of a block of flats in Sector 3, Bucharest Photo: Bianca Dragomir

Between residents’ experiences and the promises made by authorities with the help of European funds lies a gap that’s hard to ignore. Especially since the rehabilitation of apartment blocks isn’t just about insulated walls and rooftop panels, but about the way a neighborhood looks, how livable it is, and how prepared it is to face climate change, experts consulted by PressOne explain.

A promise at apartment level

„Energy renovation programs for buildings financed through European funds are an opportunity to boost a building’s energy performance, with implicit benefits such as lower energy bills, greater comfort, and increased property value. They also come with financial support, which means a smaller investment effort from personal budgets,” says Horia Petran, Senior Researcher at the National Institute for Research and Development in Construction, Urban Planning and Sustainable Spatial Development (URBAN-INCERC) and president of the pRO-nZEB Cluster, which promotes and develops the concept and projects of nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) in Romania.

In other words, energy renovation isn’t just „a layer of polystyrene,” but an upgrade to a building that, when done properly, can be felt both in everyday comfort and in people’s wallets.

But how is that improvement actually measured?

By comparing data from before and after. The problem, adds Horia Petran, is that „these data should be used for more than just the reports required by the program’s managing authorities. They should be communicated to the general public in a way that everyone can understand, highlighting their real impact.”

In daily life, the renovation makes itself felt: „In the short term, there’s a negative impact because construction takes place while residents are still living in the building. But in the long run, the impact can only be positive, provided the works were designed and implemented to meet the essential quality standards in construction,” Petran argues.

Even so, people still remember the disruption — even a decade after the rehabilitation project. „Some complain that the windows aren’t good, that we got the cheapest ones because we argued with the contractor. Someone else had their apartment broken into because thieves climbed the scaffolding,” recalls a resident of a block on Calea Vitan.

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Greening beyond insulation

„We waited a long time for the rehabilitation, and it’s a change. In winter it seems to keep the heat in, in summer it feels cooler,” says a resident of Bucharest’s Vitan neighborhood. But her enthusiasm fades quickly: „We don’t notice it on the bills, because it’s chaos anyway. We don’t have hot water — last week we had to wash in a basin again.”

The buildings’ appearance is also up for debate: „It looks nicer, although some blocks are painted one color and others another,” she adds. As for the photovoltaic panels, neighbors joke among themselves: „We laugh because we don’t even know if we actually have them. We can’t access them, but they told us they’ve been there for about a year.”

Around 100,000 apartment blocks in Romania could produce green energy by installing photovoltaic panels on their roofs. Photo: Ioana Podaru, president of Sector 3 owners association

Some residents have felt the changes more strongly: „Before, when it was freezing outside, it was really cold inside too. I’ve lived in this block since 1993, so I’ve seen it both before and after. Back then it was so cold, especially in the corner bedroom, that I would put plastic over the balcony to keep the wind out. Now it’s better — they also replaced the windows with good-quality ones, and you can feel the difference both in winter and summer. I live on the 8th floor, the sun beats down all afternoon, and it’s still cooler than it used to be,” says a resident.

No one has measured the impact of „greening” projects

When does rehabilitation become truly green?

„It depends on what we mean by ‘greening.’ If it’s about a reduced carbon footprint in the operation of renovated buildings, then that’s implicit — thanks to lower energy demand for comfort, and sometimes by upgrading the energy source to one with lower greenhouse gas emissions,” explains Horia Petran.

But „green” also means something else.

Looking beyond the walls requires real measurements and transparency, stresses Laura Nazare, Energy Transition campaign coordinator at Bankwatch.

„Unfortunately, there’s still no monitoring system that clearly shows the real effects in terms of CO₂ emissions or air quality for rehabilitation projects financed through the Large Infrastructure Operational Program (POIM) and the Regional Operational Program (POR). The reported data are more like estimates from project documentation, not on-the-ground measurements,” says Laura Nazare.

In 2022, Bankwatch published a report showing that effective mechanisms for measuring and accurately reporting program performance are missing. „At the time, we recommended setting up updated databases with information on reduced emissions, actual energy efficiency levels, and the real number of renewable energy systems installed,” Nazare adds.

Why doesn’t the air „smell” cleaner?

It’s a question residents of rehabilitated neighborhoods often ask.

What’s more, he adds, „limiting interventions to a building’s insulation, without modernizing or replacing energy sources — while keeping individual apartment boilers and failing to coordinate block renovations with upgrades to the centralized district heating system — significantly limits the potential to improve air quality at the neighborhood or city level.”

Bucharest has one of the most extensive district heating networks in the EU, but it also suffers some of the highest thermal losses, explains Nazare of Bankwatch.

„Official estimates suggest reductions in thermal losses of several dozen percentage points, which would translate into significant energy savings and corresponding cuts in emissions,” she adds.

FOTO: © Andrii Biletskyi | Dreamstime.com

Efficiency, however, doesn’t depend only on the kilometers of replaced pipelines, „but also on the quality of the works and on coordinating them with the modernization of heating plants and energy production.”

Without an integrated approach, local effects remain fragile, and air quality cannot improve through thermal insulation of apartment blocks alone.

Energy poverty: promises, realities, and missing data

Rehabilitation should also mean reducing the burden of utility bills, especially for vulnerable households. Yet, as experts consulted by PressOne explain, this effect is not being measured in any way.

„In the case of a publicly funded intervention, the owners’ contribution, if any, is small, and residents living in energy poverty are exempt from paying it — the program covers that part of the investment,” they point out.

Where photovoltaic panels are installed on blocks, how the benefits are distributed matters enormously, explains Horia Petran: „The impact of energy produced by a photovoltaic system installed on a block, in terms of reducing bills, depends more on the model agreed at the homeowners’ association level regarding how the exported energy is shared within the grid.”

Problems also with the quality of materials used

To avoid falling into the trap of excessive bureaucracy — and in turn neglecting the quality of the works — coherent packages of measures are needed to deliver the expected performance, says Horia Petran. Right now, such packages don’t exist.

There are also shortcomings in the quality of materials used and the handling of resulting waste: „There have been cases where the materials used were not the most environmentally friendly. For instance, low-quality polystyrene with a short lifespan and poor recyclability. On top of that, managing construction waste remains a weak point — often it isn’t collected and recycled properly,” says Laura Nazare.

District heating in Bucharest, apartment-level solutions in cities without networks

When it comes to impact, the capital differs from the rest of the country.

„In Bucharest, energy efficiency projects are strongly influenced by the existence of the centralized district heating system (SACET), which makes modernizing the networks crucial,” adds the Bankwatch expert.

In smaller towns, „where SACET was dismantled, investments focus more on the thermal rehabilitation of residential buildings, with direct and visible effects on residents’ consumption.”

Nazare also warns that there are virtually no investments aimed at discouraging citizens from installing fossil-fuel-based individual apartment boilers.

Bucharest vs. the rest of the country: scale, but also fragmentation

The capital also stands out for the volume of investments.

„In Bucharest, the number of energy-renovated blocks is higher than in other cities, relative to the building stock or the number of residents — one explanation being the size of the funding. At the same time, Bucharest is a collection of ‘cities,’ its sectors, and the publicly funded renovations in different sectors have been planned and implemented differently,” stresses Horia Petran.

The capital and the Bucharest-Ilfov metropolitan area are among the regions most active in securing European funds for rehabilitating and „greening” buildings. From the 2014–2020 Regional Operational Program to the current 2021–2027 Bucharest-Ilfov Regional Program, hundreds of blocks have benefited — and will continue to benefit — from interventions designed to boost their energy performance, reduce emissions, and improve residents’ comfort.

For example, in the 2014–2020 programming period, the Regional Operational Program had a financial allocation of €451,736,907.

Integration still missing

By combining funding streams aimed at buildings connected to the centralized district heating system with those for modernizing the heating networks themselves, the overall impact would have been much greater, argues Horia Petran.

Laura Nazare of Bankwatch agrees: „The main gap is the lack of an integrated approach. Building rehabilitation is treated almost exclusively as façade insulation, without including complementary measures — photovoltaic panels, green spaces for climate adaptation, sustainable materials, and coherent urban planning.”

Green transition: everyone’s right or just a privilege?

Any transition risks leaving someone behind. The question is how authorities can ensure that energy renovation remains a right accessible to everyone, including vulnerable communities.

„The solution lies in simplifying access procedures and communicating effectively about the tools available for accessing funds. But even more important is communicating the benefits of energy renovation and developing financing instruments that are accessible to every category of property owners,” explains Horia Petran for PressOne.

For vulnerable communities, the message must be clear: „Support through public funding must continue, and authorities need to define strategies that pursue energy and environmental performance in parallel with the other needs of vulnerable communities.”

PressOne asked the Ministry of Development, Public Works and Administration and the Ministry of Investments and European Projects (MIPE) for detailed information on the scale of rehabilitation works.

According to the data received, under the 2014–2020 Regional Operational Program, two project calls were launched in Bucharest-Ilfov, through which 784 blocks were rehabilitated.

At the level of the competent authorities, there are no performance or environmental indicators to show not only how many blocks were rehabilitated, but also how much the quality of life has changed.

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