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Voita, T. “Building decarbonization and affordable housing: promoting local skills and accelerating the green deal”, Policy Paper N°312, Jacques Delors Institute, April 2025

Europe is at the forefront of global energy decarbonisation, and buildings are a key pillar of this transition. They account for about 40% of the EU’s final energy consumption and 36% of energy-related emissions, with 75% of European buildings suffering from poor energy performance and needing to be renovated by 2030. The attention to building performance has grown in recent years, spurred by two major events: the COVID-19 crisis first, which led many European citizens to spend more time at home due to the lockdowns, and highlighted the poor ventilation of many European buildings. Second, the energy crisis, exacerbated by the Russian attack on Ukraine, led to a massive increase in energy prices with important consequences in terms of energy poverty. Currently, 8 to 16% of Europeans are considered energy poor.

European building decarbonization policies started early. In 2010, the EU adopted the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), revised in 2024, and complemented by the 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), revised in 2023. Reflecting the increasing recognition of the building sector’s importance in the energy transition, the 2024 – 2029 European Commission has added the housing sector to the prerogatives of the Energy Commissioner. This demonstrates that building renovation can no longer be considered without its social dimension anymore, i.e. the promotion of affordable and/or social housing and the fight against energy poverty. Renovation is critical even when considering service buildings that play a social role, typically for schools or hospitals. Renovation is now part of broader infrastructure upgrade projects, with considerations about heating systems and adaptation to extreme weather events such as heat waves. These developments create new challenges for local governments. They must adjust their skills, acquire new ones, and find the right renovation policies that benefit affordable housing.

This report aims to identify the skills that local governments need the most. It first assesses the main challenges that local governments need to address in their building policies, then it identifies specific hurdles and difficulties they are facing, and that require the acquisition of new skills, before identifying these. It concludes with a set of policy recommendations.

Key messages :

• Building decarbonization policies are a pillar of the EU, showing that the energy transition in this sector can only succeed if it is supported by measures ensuring that housing is affordable for all.
• Achieving the renovation targets will require a complete overhaul of the financial support: investments and funding need to be significantly increased, made more transparent, better targeted, carefully planned (ensuring long-term visibility) and more broadly accessible.
• Although local governments are extremely diverse throughout Europe, they share common needs such as improved data collection, better monitoring and verification – achievable through wider access to innovative digital solutions-, adoption of whole-of-(local)-government and whole-of-society approaches, and stronger planning skills.
• Municipalities need to be empowered in all fields (political, technical, financial) and require support to develop “soft” skills, that is to say, negotiation, communication, project coordination, etc.
• Finally, to help governments navigate the proliferation of initiatives, many of which do not always match their needs, there is a clear need to simplify and reframe the available support mechanisms.