In order to increase the amount of buildings which are renovated in a way which makes them more energy efficient, financing and investment needs to be made available. With this in mind, the    “Investor Confidence Project Europe” (partially funded by Horizon 2020) aims to identify ways in which financing for the building renovation market can be unlocked.

New research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may have found a way of identifying which buildings offer the greatest potential when it comes to retrofitting for energy efficiency.  Thanks to these finding it may be possible to indentify which retrofitting programs offer the highest return on investment and have the greatest impact on a city's overall greenhouse gas emissions.

The need to address the existing building stock is mainly driven by energy efficiency considerations. Buildings alone are responsible in Europe for 40% of energy consumption, which makes it the single biggest potential sector for energy savings. For this reason, both the Energy Performance of Buildings and the Energy Efficiency Directives set targets to buildings to achieve the 20-20-20 strategy, and the latter even sets a minimum amount of total floor area to be renovated yearly by central governments.