UIPI Survey: Property owners' willingness and capacity to renovate
UIPI is launching an online survey that intends to assess how European property owners, be they owner-occupier households or individual/professional landlords, feel about their properties and the need to renovate them to make them more energy efficient and sustainable as well as their real capacity and willingness to do so. The objective of this survey is to “test the water” and gauge how the property sector and European households are adapting and making their homes and property portfolio more climate friendly and how the Covid-19 crisis might have changed their objectives and aspirations. This should help UIPI to advocate tailor-made policy actions and measures to guarantee that the European building sector and European households contribute realistically to meeting European Commission’s climate objectives. The survey should also feed into UIPI’s work and projects on improving energy efficiency of the European building stock.
Doubling the renovation rate, increasing the depth of renovation and renovating 35 million building units by 2030 are among the objectives of the Renovation Wave Strategy published last October. The goal is to decarbonise the European building stock by 2050. If property owners are major actors of the Renovation Wave and if the barriers they are facing are already well documented, more attention should be given to their real capacities to renovate. For the future policy measures to be successful they need to assess the situation of the property owners they will affect, thus avoiding forced maladapted measures upon EU citizens, all while enabling and empowering change.
Adding to this scenario, the COVID-19 crisis, and the insecurity it brought along, have impacted families’ and businesses’ expectations, objectives and plans. Renovating homes and properties either became more challenging or, on the contrary, more urgent/desired, as making homes more sustainable can represent savings in energy bills, and could be part of a recovery plan to make the built-environment more efficient and healthy.
Therefore, within the scope of the EU-funded project TripleA-Reno, committed to make home renovation acceptable, affordable and attractive, UIPI developed the survey to understand this new reality, and guarantee that property owners interests and concerns are understood and represented.
Having a better understanding of what property owners and citizens are ready to do –and can do – when it comes to renovating their homes and properties to make them more energy-efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable, is crucial to help us defend their voice and needs.
UIPI hopes for a wide participation to guarantee an accurate representation. The survey will be open until 24 February, do not hesitate to take it and share it widely.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 784972.
