Owner-occupiers and the quality of their dwellings

Home-owners are in principal responsible for maintaining the physical quality of their dwellings. It is in their own interest to do this in an adequate manner, but all kinds of constraints can and do occur in practice. Lack of financial means and insufficient (technical or practical) knowledge are only two of the possible barriers. The quality...

Waking a sleeping giant: Policy tools to improve the energy performance of the existing housing stock in the Netherlands

The Netherlands like many European countries has issued ambitious national targets to achieve climate change goals. It is recognised that to achieve these goals the energy saving potential idling in the existing housing stock must be exploited. To date the Dutch response is largely defined by the typical national repertoire of policy instruments...