Buildings can balance the grid through proactive energy demand management and can play a leading role in transforming the EU energy market, shifting from centralised, fossil-fuel-based systems towards a decentralised, renewable, interconnected and variable system. Many actors agree that buildings have a role in shaping the Energy Market Design Initiative.

The iBRoad project aims to eliminate barriers to deep renovation by developing an Individual Building Renovation Roadmap for single-family houses. The tool provides a customised renovation plan over a long-term period (10-20 years), which considers the occupants’ needs and specific situations (e.g.

Roughly 97% of the European Union (EU)’s building stock, amounting to over 30 billion m2, is not considered energy efficient, and 75 to 85% of it will still be in use in 2050.

In 2016, most EU legislation on buildings, including the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and the Renewable Energy Sources Directive (RED), are undergoing a review process. With this in mind, the European Commission decided to establish the European Union (EU) Building Stock Observatory to monitor buildings’ energy performance improvement and its impact on the actual energy consumption of the sector in the EU Member States.

From 2016 to 2018, the EmBuild project supported municipalities to develop local renovation strategies, focused on tackling their public buildings. The ultimate aim was to address the challenges of reducing energy and CO2 emissions, by driving the development and adoption of ambitious plans.

The European Union is facing a double challenge: increasing building renovation rates while aiming at achieving “deep renovations”. Increasing the current EU renovation rate from 1.2% per annum to 2-3% is essential to meet both the EU 2020 targets and the commitment undertaken in Paris in December 2015. About 75% of the EU's 210 million buildings are not energy efficient, and 75% to 85% of them will still be in use in 2050. Ensuring a highly-efficient and fully decarbonised building stock by 2050 is a major challenge.