The energy performance of dwellings with heat pumps of Dutch non-profit housing associations

Achieving energy efficiency in the built environment requires extensive efforts in the renovation and adaptation of housing stock. A promising design solution is the heat pump. While gas boiler systems are commonly used in Dutch non-profit housing stock, the share of dwellings with a heat pump grew from 1.6% in 2017 to 3.2% in 2021. However,...

Consultancy Centres and Pop-Ups as Local Authority Policy Instruments to Stimulate Adoption of Energy Efficiency by Homeowners

The housing sector is responsible for a more than a quarter of the total final energy consumption in the EU. As the majority (70%) of the EU-housing stock is owner occupied and largely consists of single family dwellings it is understandable that many countries focus their energy saving policies on homeowners. Complementary to the national...

Energy regulations for housing and the performance gap

The goals of energy saving and CO2 reductions to create an energy neutral building stock seem only to be reached by strict and supportive governmental policies. In Europe the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive are driving forces for Member States to develop and strengthen energy performance regulations...

Dutch municipalities and the quality of the owner-occupied housing stock

Owners are responsible to maintain their own dwellings in an adequate manner. In practice however all kinds of constraints occur. Lack of financial means and insufficient (technical or practical) knowledge are the most important barriers. Because the quality of owner-occupied housing exceeds the individual interest; there are also general...

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...

Between marketing and financial support: Dutch municipal policy instruments to improve the quality of private housing stock

Dutch municipalities are faced with an ageing private housing stock, of which parts show a diversity of quality backlogs, including their energy quality. Dutch municipalities are in the process of developing a combination of communicative and economic policy instruments to seduce private homeowners to invest in their dwellings’ quality....

Between marketing and financial support: Dutch municipal policy instruments to improve the quality of private housing stock

Dutch municipalities are faced with an ageing private housing stock, of which parts show a diversity of quality backlogs, including their energy quality. Dutch municipalities are in the process of developing a combination of communicative and economic policy instruments to seduce private homeowners to invest in their dwellings’ 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...

Dutch ideas for stressing the responsibility of homeowners for housing quality