Decarbonising Buildings in Europe: Insights from energy efficiency and phase-out policies outside the EU?

Decarbonising the EU building stock is crucial for the transformation to climate neutrality – but also to reduce fossil fuel dependency, and to save costs for consumers. However, lowering emissions from the buildings sector remains a persistent challenge for the EU, with manifold barriers and obstacles impeding progress – split incentives between landlords and tenants, skills and labour shortages and supply chain disruptions, path dependencies for grid infrastructure, district heating and electricity, lacking finance for energy efficiency and slow emergence of business models centred around it, to name but a few. Across the EU, renovation rates remain far below what would be required to meet 2030 emissions targets and climate neutrality by mid-century.

Yet some jurisdictions outside the EU have managed to address at least some of the barriers and obstacles. Join us at this workshop to discuss what the EU can learn from experiences outside the EU – in particular Norway, the US and Canada to surpass current financing roadblocks and to end its reliance on fossil-fuel-based heating technologies.