Putting renovation on the agenda: Global perspectives on the value of renovation

Energy Transition

26 Sept

Putting renovation on the agenda: Global perspectives on the value of renovation

Buildings affect many important aspects of human existence. We spend roughly 90% of our lives indoors so the quality of the buildings contributes significantly to our health, our wellbeing and our productivity - at work and at home. Further, the energy we consume in buildings contribute to climate change and local pollution, when the energy is produced by burning fossil fuels.

Renovating buildings brings a very wide range of benefits, both economics related, health and productivity related and social related benefits:

Combats climate change
Increasing resilience
Reducing energy bills
Supporting employment
Improving indoor comfort, wellbeing and productivity
Lowering outdoor air pollution
Creating attractive cities with social responsibility
Alleviating energy poverty

Cities and governments are the key players in leading the transformation of the building stock. Indeed, the individual and collective choices made by cities when addressing the issue of climate change set the agenda for communities and governments everywhere. In this process, it is important for policy makers to:

Take significant and effective action by massive capacity building (information, training, education, facilitation), removing undesirable regulatory barriers, and improving access to financing;
Ensure a long-term commitment regarding ambitions and policies and;
Lead by example – large scale public ownership provides room for achieving economies of scale and testing new business models.

The study is commissioned by Rockwool and written in collaboration with Copenhagen Economics.

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