Austria

In Austria, the implementation of building regulations is under the jurisdiction of the provinces. The Austrian Institute of Construction Engineering (OIB) was assigned to manage the harmonising process of the implementation of the EPBD in the provinces in 2006.

The EPBD (Directive 2010/31/EU), as amended by Directive 2018/844, has been implemented in Austria by the nine (9) provinces (Länder). It provided an opportunity for the development and harmonisation of a common calculation methodology as well as for the application of new regulations for technical building systems.

The issuance of EPCs was already a fact in several provinces even before implementing the EPBD. The EPBD implementation has resulted in further developed building regulations. The EPC has become an important tool in April 2012 following the implementation of the EPBD, as well as signing into law the mandatory provision of the EPC (the Energy Performance Certificate Providence Act), which applies to apartment or building purchases and rentals, and its tightening through the imposition of penalties for non‐compliance later that same year.

The Austrian national plan for increasing the number of residential and non-residential NZEB by 2020 was first published in 2014 and revised in 2018. The Long-Term Renovation Strategy (LTRS) was made public in April 2020. The national building regulation directive (OIB Guideline 6) as regards energy efficiency is being tightened in a two-year step to achieve the requirements by 2026. The last recast of OIB Guideline 6 was published in spring 2023. Furthermore, Austria has already started defining national goals for 2030 and beyond – based on the Paris climate conference agreement, which entered into force in 2016.