Discussion
If you care about #housing and are a EU citizen, you could consider signing the brand new European Citizen Initiative on the right to housing. Collection starts today. I know some of the people involved, and I can vouch for them.
https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2026/000010_en
@nemobis these are insightful questions, Nemo. Operationally, yes: I have seen energy bills data being used very successfully to figure out where the empty buildings are.
As for the 220 GEUR... that's the Green New Deal for you. You raise the level of ambition; bring the ECB along so you can apply modern monetary theory; and do inflation control by taxing stuff that you do not want produced (luxury goods, including luxury housing). That's how you do it.
@alberto_cottica Yeah, my one concern with asking a specific figure is that we've not had the EC or EIB fund anything remotely in that scale yet, and for what projects I've seen we have reasons to believe the carbon breakeven point is decades in the future. Whereas if you ask the EIB to fund, say, 1 T€/y in renewables and electrification you can be reasonably certain what you get in return in the aggregate (not with individual bets; some will fail spectacularly).
@nemobis that link returns 404 to me...
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@alberto_cottica «We demand a European register that counts every vacant home and office across Europe» https://freight.cargo.site/m/Y3054715472159133880943369323820/Right-to-Housing.eu_One-Pager_Print-A4.pdf
Speaking of, how's EPBD art. 22 ("Databases for the energy performance of buildings") going?
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/1275/oj/eng#d1e3772-1-1
Historically such a cadastre/registry has only ever existed in connection with taxation. Propose an own resource for the MFF?
Otherwise I guess you could force the energy companies to release a list of suspected abandoned units as #OpenData?
#EUpolicy