The decarbonisation of Europe’s building stock is progressing faster than it was a few years ago. Still, the gap with climate objectives persists, revealing significant imbalances across sectors and technologies.
The fourth edition of the EU Buildings Climate Tracker, produced by the Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE), concludes that the decarbonisation of Europe’s building stock has accelerated since 2022, but is still progressing at an insufficient pace to meet climate neutrality objectives. According to the report, the sector remains approximately nine points behind the required trajectory, indicating that recent progress has not yet translated into a structural transformation of the building stock.
The analysis reveals uneven progress across indicators. While electricity decarbonisation and reductions in energy consumption in service-sector buildings are advancing relatively well, the deployment of renewable heating and cooling systems, reductions in residential energy consumption and investment in renovation continue to represent the main bottlenecks.
The report also warns that building decarbonisation is essential to improving housing affordability, reducing households’ exposure to volatile energy prices, and limiting the social and health impacts associated with inefficient buildings. In this context, it highlights the need to ensure the effective implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and the Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) in order to translate European objectives into tangible and lasting results.
