Towards Additional Policies to Improve the Environmental Performance of Buildings. Part II: Quantitative Assessment

This report supports EU policymaking on sustainable consumption and production (SCP) in the area of buildings, which were indentified as being particularly relevant for environmental improvements. Various policies exist or have been proposed at EU level to improve the energy efficiency and thus the environmental performance of buildings. However, these policies address mainly new buildings and major renovations of existing buildings. Previous research has shown that on top of the policies already in place there is the potential for additional policies to lead to further reductions in the environmental impacts. Improving the energy efficiency of certain building elements such as windows and roofs independently of major renovations of whole buildings was identified as potential main target of such additional policies. This report presents the quantitative assessment of the possible environmental and socio-economic effects of such policy measures. In particular, two types of measures addressing the energy efficiency of building elements are assessed: 1) requiring high energy efficiency standards (thermal insulation levels) when individual building elements have to be renovated, and 2) accelerating the retrofitting of individual building elements according to high energy efficiency standards. The results of the modelling show that additional policies could deliver further substantial savings of energy and greenhouse gas emissions and that the socio-economic benefits would outweigh the costs.