By the year 2050, Germany’s building stock should be “almost climate-neutral”. To achieve this, it is necessary to renovate older buildings in such a way that they become energy-efficient buildings. Currently, only about 1% of the building envelope is renovated every year. Why? In order for renovation measures to actually be initiated and implemented, the renovation must in each specific case be beneficial for the building owner or the investor.

So far, this benefit is often reduced on the factor of the saved energy costs. However, these alone seldom provide sufficient incentive for the necessary, often demanding energy-efficiency renovation measures. Currently the so-called additional benefits (often also referred to as multiple benefits) are usually not included in cost-benefit analyses.

We have written a report that focuses on precisely these non-energy benefits of energy-efficient building renovation.  The report is based on the Trialog “Building renovation: not only good for the climate – what are the additional benefits worth”, which took place on 5 September 2019 in Berlin. 46 stakeholders from the public sector, the business sector, organised civil society, science and the media discussed, among other things, which benefits of energy-efficient building renovation are relevant for the target groups and which approaches exist to quantify these benefits.

The executive summary of the report in English is available here.

The full-length-report in German language is available here.

The Trialog took place as part of the project “Multiple benefits as drivers of energy-efficient building renovation”, which is jointly carried out by HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA and the Buildings Performance Institute Europe. The project is funded by the German Federal Foundation for the Environment.