Open Access

Stefan Thomas, Birte Schnurr, Oliver Wagner

• For its fair contribution to limiting the overshooting time for the 1.5K target of the Paris agreement, the EU would have to decarbonize its building stock by around 2035. In theory, this would even be feasible. A study for Germany showed how an ambitious package of policies could achieve such a target. It needs to increase deep renovations to at least 3 % per year, install 1 million heat pumps annually, and double the share of district heating while greening it. The core policies would be stringent MEPS coupled with lots of financial incentives. In the long run, it would even be cost-effective. Results from this study are forming the first part of this paper. Reality, however, appears different. In the first days of Russia's war ofFor its fair contribution to limiting the overshooting time for the 1.5K target of the Paris agreement, the EU would have to decarbonize its building stock by around 2035. In theory, this would even be feasible. A study for Germany showed how an ambitious package of policies could achieve such a target. It needs to increase deep renovations to at least 3 % per year, install 1 million heat pumps annually, and double the share of district heating while greening it. The core policies would be stringent MEPS coupled with lots of financial incentives. In the long run, it would even be cost-effective. Results from this study are forming the first part of this paper. Reality, however, appears different. In the first days of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, the German government adopted the aim to effectively ban all fossil heating by 1 January 2024. But when it drafted the law in early 2023, it missed to prepare plans at the same time to make energy efficiency easy and attractive via enhanced financial incentives and advice. Using targeted misinformation, incumbents and some political parties found it easy to confuse citizens about the social impacts of heat pumps, which led to a significantly watered down ambition in the final legislation. In the second part of the paper, we explain how this process unfolded, and what can be learned for countries that wish to fare better in energy efficiency policy-making. Finally, we analyse how policies complementing binding energy efficiency legislation could be modified to enable all citizens, including those with lower incomes, to implement and benefit from the transformation of the building stock towards net zero. This particularly concerns targeted financial incentives and advice, including one-stop-shops. It will be decisive for (re-)gaining acceptance for energy efficiency renovation and low-carbon heating systems, and hence for a successful implementation of the new EPBD with regard to ambitious decarbonization of the buildings stock to support climate justice, combined with improving social equity and fighting energy poverty, including through renovation of the worst-performing buildings.…