Refurbishing residential buildings

In many European countries the share of existing old buildings – built before the first heat conservation regulation - is large. Thus, these buildings represent a huge potential for energy saving which, however, is hard to exploit. Achieving this challenge depends not only on technical solutions but also on socio-economic drivers and barriers (skills of stakeholders, motivational aspects, household incomes, regulation and incentives, norms and values…).
The paper results from a study covering five European countries. It aims at analysing the importance of socio-economic and cultural factors in the decision making process, and to identify the supply conditions necessary to meet households’ needs in terms of energy-efficient refurbishment. To do so, several energy efficient retrofitted houses in private ownership in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and France were selected as case studies. For each case, onsite qualitative interviews were conducted with the owners, residents and involved professionals.
Prior to that field work, a thorough context analysis was conducted in each country in order to reveal specificities regarding the retrofitting markets, and the support measures implemented by local or national authorities as regards energy refurbishment. This study allows to compare experiences and to share knowledge about support actions able to boost energy-efficient retrofitting. Amongst others, the paper examines the following questions: Which are the motivations for implementing energy efficiency measures? Are there any typical profiles of home owners and professionals? What is the role of financial incentives?
What is the role of local public structures?
The results indicate in particular that:
 people getting involved in projects of energy-efficient refurbishment seem not to be mainly and exclusively motivated by energy savings,
 there is apparently a lack of skilled work force able to meet the requirements of energy efficient retrofitting,
 public support schemes for retrofitting measures appear to play a crucial role,
 the local embedding of projects seems to be important.


Huber, A., Mayer, I., Beillan, V., Goater, A., Trotignon, R., Battaglini, E. (2011). Refurbishing residential buildings: A socio-economic analysis of retrofitting projects in five European countries. Presented at World Sustainable Energy Days, Wels, Austria, March 2 – 4.