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Buildings occupy an important role in our modern society. However, the existing buildings have a very low thermal protection, leading to high levels of energy consumption making the buildings sector among the most significant CO2 source in Europe. Even if new buildings have high performance levels, the majority of the building stock is represented by older buildings which require renovation work. The European Union has imposed important reduction of specific energy consumption in all sectors, but energy conservation in buildings remains a key element in obtaining the sustainable development as evidence of human solidarity beyond the limits of space and time. In this paper the importance of the energy reductions in the building sector is outlined and both the energy policy and building stock statistics in EU and Romania are presented. Moreover, some measures and initiatives at European level are discussed, focusing on some important themes: demography, housing stock age and energy requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A big amount of final energy in Europe is used in buildings (about 50%). Thermo insulating investments in the building sector can have a great impact on the improvement of the energetic efficiency of buildings and the reduction of the use of final energy in this sector. In the paper there were presented properly modified indicators for the economic assessment of the investments which is based on the thermal insulation of external walls of the building, such as: net present value, profitability indicator and payback period. For the ecological assessment the following indicators were introduced: ecological net present value, ecological indicator of profitability and ecological payback period. LCA technique was used in ecological indicators. For different variants of external walls, sources of heat and thermo insulating materials, the assessment of investments due to economic and ecological indicators was conducted. Ecological payback periods were obtained within 0–6 years. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]