80% of households can now request aid from the Recovery Plan to rehabilitate homes

Almost all the autonomous communities and cities have published the calls for aid for the residential rehabilitation program

MADRID, 26 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, highlighted this Monday that 80% of households can now request European subsidies for residential rehabilitation, within the framework of the investments provided for in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR).

And it is that almost all the communities have already published the calls for aid from the rehabilitation program for economic and social recovery in residential environments, endowed with 3,420 million euros, of which 1,151 have already been mobilized and 1,389 million are in process.

This was expressed by the minister at the Residential Rehabilitation Forum held this Monday at the Ministry headquarters and which was attended by representatives of the construction, real estate, architecture, and financial entities sectors, among others. .

In her speech, Raquel Sánchez defended the opportunity that the Recovery Plan and European funds represent in the field of residential rehabilitation, since they allow energy efficiency to be promoted and homes, residential buildings and neighborhoods to be improved. In this context, she has advocated joining efforts, pointing out that "investing in rehabilitation is also investing in economic and social development".

In her speech, the minister reviewed the situation of the building stock in Spain, which has approximately 25.7 million homes, of which nearly 19 million are primary residences. Of them, more than half are prior to 1980, so "they are very improvable" in terms of energy efficiency, and more than a million are in poor condition, deficient or dilapidated.

Likewise, he pointed out that, in rural areas, 30% of the building stock is prior to 1960, and secondary and empty dwellings account for 44%, 15 points more than the national average. Regarding the latter, more than 24% are in poor or dilapidated condition; and, in absolute values, more than 410,000 empty homes are practically uninhabitable.

As he explained, the refurbishment rate in Spain does not reach 0.1% per year of all dwellings, compared to France or Norway, where the percentage of dwellings refurbished per year is 2%; in Germany it is around 1.5%; and in Italy it stands at 0.77%, which is why, with the funds, the aim is to contribute to promoting this type of investment.

Thus, he stressed that the objective is to approach 300,000 actions per year, which is the goal set for 2030 in the Integrated National Plan for the Economy and Climate. In short, it is about multiplying by ten the annual residential renovations throughout this decade.

To achieve this, as has been stated, it is necessary to rehabilitate 1.2 million homes by 2030 and, in parallel, undertake a similar process annually with 300,000 square meters (m2) of buildings in the tertiary sector, both public and private.

In this regard, he added that meeting this objective will mean a reduction in annual primary energy consumption of around 3,000 gigawatt hours per year, which is equivalent to 23% of the savings established by the Energy and Climate Plan for the entire residential sector. .