Europe’s buildings renovation plans praised by JRC

The 16 draft plans submitted between December 2025 and May 2026 project primary energy consumption to fall by 6-30% by 2030 and 24-73% by 2050, compared to current levels.

Many of them aim for renewables to cover 40% to 90% of buildings' energy consumption by 2030 and they also show a strong commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with around half targeting reduction above 90% by 2050.

The draft plans are from Austria, Belgium (Walloon Region), Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

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These have been submitted under the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), which requires member states to develop national building renovation plans to transform their building stock to be highly energy efficient and decarbonised by 2050.

The final national plans are due by the end of 2026.

Plan assessment

The assessment focused on the ambition of the draft plans in terms of targets, policies and financial resources, as well as on their completeness and consistency with other EU reporting exercises, a statement reads.

The findings show a strong overall commitment to reducing energy use in buildings and a clear level of ambition towards an energy efficient and decarbonised building stock, with all draft plans including targets for reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Compared with the 2020 long-term renovation strategies, the draft plans show significant improvements in completeness, structure and overall comparability.

However, several areas would benefit from further strengthening, such as energy poverty alleviation, the quantification of policy impacts, minimum energy performance standards for non-residential buildings, and data on the current status of building renovation.

Overall, the draft plans demonstrate strong commitments towards the EU’s energy and climate objectives and they provide a solid basis for developing the final plans, the JRC concludes.

Requirements for the plans include an overview of the national building stock for different building types, a roadmap with nationally established targets for 2030, 2040 and 2050, an overview of planned policies and measures and an outline of the investment needs and financing sources for its implementation.

Building renovation

Buildings account for more than 30% of all energy used in Europe and 50% of natural gas consumed.

Making buildings more energy efficient and decarbonised should lower energy bills and makes them more liveable, particularly during the harsh winter cold or summer heatwaves.

The analysis indicates that buildings are becoming more energy efficient, even where overall consumption trends may be influenced by factors such as changes in floor area or activity levels.

It further indicates that, by 2030, final energy consumption in the building sector is expected to decrease faster than economy-wide final energy consumption in most cases, highlighting the central role of building renovation and energy efficiency measures in achieving national energy and climate commitments.

In this context the latest EU statistics indicate that in 2025 almost a quarter (23.9%) of the EU population were living in a dwelling in which energy efficiency was improved in the last 5 years. 

The largest shares of people living in dwellings with improved energy efficiency were recorded in the Netherlands (60.5%), Denmark (34.0%), France and Slovenia (both 33.3%). The lowest shares were in Italy (2.6%), Malta (7.8%) and Greece (9.5%).

People at risk of poverty or social exclusion were less likely to report living in dwellings with improved energy efficiency (17.4%) compared with those not at risk (25.6%) – these differences most pronounced in the Netherlands (45.3% vs 63.3%), Cyprus (16.7% vs 30.3%) and Denmark (22.9% vs 36.4%).  

Cooling on increase

The EU statistics also indicate the rise in the use of air conditioning in the region, with electricity for such cooling reaching 80,400TJ in 2024.

This marks an almost doubling from 40,500TJ in 2017, with the consumption having increased every year except 2023 and 2020, when there were decreases compared to the previous years.

Among EU countries, Italy, Spain and Greece registered the highest total energy use for space cooling, with 26,300TJ, 14,300TJ and 11,900TJ respectively.

However, Cyprus and Malta have by far the highest shares of energy used for space cooling in final household consumption, at 16% and 15%.

In Greece, 7.4% of household energy use was for cooling, while in Spain and Italy, the shares were lower at 2.5% and 2.3%.