Modeling a renovation wave at sub-national resolution for the EU building stock

Extended abstract 3-026-26

Understanding how the energy needs of different sectors will evolve in the future is key to informing climate policy design.

In this study, we develop a building energy sectoral model for Europe that can consider technology adoption dynamics at the subnational scale, with high (0.5° x 0.5°) resolution. The model focuses on energy efficiency by considering building renovation, space heating, and space cooling, as well as the interplay between these factors. We simulate wide-scale renovation waves in Europe, understanding where we can expect more household renovation efforts and where, instead, policy support will be most needed in the following decades. We develop three scenarios: the Reference one, where no public policy is in place, the Historical Renovation Rate one, where we reproduce the renovation trends observed in the last years in the EU countries, and the Low Energy Demand one, where a high renovation rate is achieved, along with a cap on floorspace and strong electrification of end uses.

Our results show that energy renovation investments in EU27 need to increase by roughly 18%, in respect with historical data, to   significantly reduce energy demand (-51.3%) and emissions (-74.4%) by 2050 in the Low Energy Demand scenario. Spatial clustering of renovation activities, which this work uncovers with unprecedented detail across the EU both between and within countries, should be anticipated and explicitly accounted for in the design of European-level policy instruments. 

To increase renovation rates through subsidies, we find that public government support should roughly match private investments, especially in those regions where the conditions of the building stock, construction costs and energy expenditures might not motivate households to renovate. This is a significant departure from the current situation where private investments are about 20 times higher than public ones. 

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