Energy and demographic challenge
The PREE 5000 is a program with important subsidies that try to give an extra boost to sustainability in building, taking into account that the Spanish building stock currently consumes 30% of the final energy, there is much to do in this issue.
In addition, we find an addition, the demographic challenge in some 6,827 Spanish municipalities with up to 5,000 inhabitants, in which, in the last decade, eight out of ten have lost population. Collectively, we are talking about 410,000 fewer people than ten years ago. In municipalities with less than 1,000 inhabitants, there is talk of a depopulation that reaches almost 86%.
In all these urban centers, secondary and empty houses account for 44%, with 30% of them being homes prior to 1960. In addition, in the smaller nuclei, the houses are in a dilapidated, bad or deficient state.
These grants aim to give a boost of sustainability to the buildings in the municipalities demographic challenge of our country with different actions that, in addition, help a greater sustainability.
Funds for the PREE
The budget for PREE grants is 50,000,000 euros. It will be financed with the European Recovery and Resilience Mechanism and will be distributed among the autonomous communities according to the number of municipalities and nuclei of less than 5,000 inhabitants and their population in each autonomous community.
Applications may be submitted in each Autonomous Community until December 31, 2023.
Who can benefit from this aid
Among the recipients of this program we find natural and legal persons of a private or public nature who own existing buildings intended for any use.
Also the communities of owners or the groups of communities of owners of residential buildings for housing use or the owners who, in a grouped way, meet the requirements established in article 396 of the Civil Code and have not granted the constitutive title of Horizontal Property.
Applicants will also include companies operating, tenants or concessionaires of buildings that prove this condition, as well as energy service companies or energy service providers.
Also local entities and the institutional public sector of public administrations, as well as renewable energy communities and citizen energy communities, among others.
What can be done with these grants
Volums Estudi - d'Arquitectura
As for the eligible actions, the truth is that there are many. They mainly correspond to three typologies.
On the one hand we have the improvements in it thermal envelope. The thermal envelope encompasses all the enclosures of a building, plus the gaps it presents and also the thermal bridges. We can say that it is what separates the living area of the buildings from the outside and, therefore, isolates.
On the other hand we would have the actions that improve the energy efficiency of thermal installations. In this typology we could include the replacement of conventional energy by solar thermal, geothermal energy or biomass. Also the improvement of the energy efficiency of generation subsystems not included above, such as heat pumps, as well as the improvement of the energy efficiency of distribution, regulation, control and emission subsystems of thermal installations.
Finally, we would have the improvements of the lighting installation. In this case, the actions must justify the reduction of 30% of the consumption of non-renewable primary energy and reach a jump of one letter in carbon dioxide emissions with respect to their initial situation. This is achieved through the energy certificate of the current building and the one after the actions.
Other considerations
For the actions to be eligible, it will be necessary to include a study of waste management and demolition in which it is fulfilled that, at least, 70% of construction waste (by weight) and demolition are prepared for reuse, recycling and recovery of other materials.
The buildings will also have to have been built before 2007.
The actions may be carried out in single-family residential buildings, collective residential buildings or administrative, health, teaching, cultural buildings, etc. However, they must be located in the so-called "municipalities of demographic challenge", which are municipalities up to 5,000 inhabitants, as well as non-urban municipalities of up to 20,000 inhabitants in which all their unique population entities are up to 5,000 inhabitants.
Financial endowment of the aid
The amount of these aids will be for the type of improvement of the envelope of 50%, of 40% in the thermal installations and in lighting of 20%.
In the event that the rehabilitation is carried out in homes or individual premises within buildings, these percentages will be 40%, 30% and 20%.
Those actions that raise the energy rating of the building to obtain an energy class A or B on the CO2 scale or increase the energy rating they had before the action will be entitled to additional aid.
Integrated actions that simultaneously combine two or more typologies, one of them being the thermal envelope that implies a 30% reduction in air conditioning, will also be entitled to additional aid.
