MED-DESIRE has launched a wide survey to summarize success factors and recommendations to guide the development of effectively operating SOs in the Local or Central Authorities belonging to the countries project partners. Several SOs (known also as ordinances, the legal provisions requiring the installation of solar systems to cover a fraction of new or renovated buildings’ energy demand) have been deeply analysed and compared worldwide. In order to make the survey of SOs as comprehensive as possible, a number of factors has been taken into account for choosing and selecting the parts of legislation to be analysed, specifically: geographical outreach, validity scope, date of start (including “historical” SOs and brand new ones), technologies (a part of legislation on photovoltaic obligation, implemented in Barcelona, has been included), scope of application (SOs applicable to new buildings, SOs which include renovations and modifications and SOs which apply even to existing buildings), results (SOs in Hawaii, which could be regarded as of less relevance, have been included because of the availability of practical figures about their success).
15 SOs, collecting experiences from all over the world, have been thus analysed and reported. The collection is considered as open, so that, if an additional interesting piece of legislation comes into force, it can be easily added to the survey. The two main sources of information for finding the most suitable SOs have been: the EU-supported “ProSTO” project www.solarordinances.eu and the information portal www.solarthermalworld.org which did in the past an extensive research work on the SO tool for fostering the solar thermal market at national and local level.
The foremost outcomes of the horizontal analysis, which could help building a solid ground for the development of the new SOs foreseen for the Local Administrations in the MED-DESIRE project, are mainly: the additional building cost needed for complying with SOs is often very low, usually below 1%; the building stages under the scope of the law can easily include not only new buildings but also renovation and extension activities; quality requirements should be put in place, possibly referring to already existing standards; too complicated quality rules should be avoided since they are hardly verifiable; monitoring of results of SOs should be put in place from the very beginning and the results themselves should be used to develop improved versions of the laws; the involvement of all stakeholders already from the preparation phase is a key success factor.
The significant combination of sources and contributors, including high-level online portals and direct contacts, has thus allowed to develop a good level of information for most of the collected SOs. Moreover a “World Map” of solar and renewable building codes has been produced in order to give in a graphic form an overview of all implemented building codes worldwide differentiated by colours, special items and comments.
Survey on Solar obligations (SOs) and the “World Map” are available here for download.