Belgium, one of the top four European countries with high per capita fossil fuel usage in buildings, has allocated 332 million for improving renovation subsidy schemes in the Flemish and Brussels-Capital regions. This funding aims to accelerate energy efficiency renovations (EERs) in residential buildings. However, financial constraints are not the only barriers to EERs. Governance presents a significant challenge, particularly for non-owner-occupied buildings. In Flanders, 29% of dwellings are rented, with 66% being privately rented. More than half of the rented homes in Flanders have an energy performance certificate D or even lower. Tenants in multi-family buildings encounter difficulties in meeting socially and materially required energy service levels. Renovating privately rented apartments can play a crucial role in achieving Belgium's energy efficiency targets and reducing energy bills for tenants facing energy poverty. Existing literature primarily focuses on identifying barriers for homeowners and governance issues related to energy-efficient building stock, but little research examines aligning policy instruments with these identified barriers. This study aims to explore how policy instruments can overcome barriers and help achieve Flemish energy efficiency targets while alleviating energy poverty. The research includes a literature review and semi-structured interviews, with a focus on incorporating the tenant perspective on EERs. Recommendations will be provided to the Flemish government to accelerate EERs in the private rental sector. To reach the energy efficiency targets, policy instruments should be implemented at the regional and municipal levels, involving distribution grid managers, banks, and other organizations. The Flemish government should create a stable environment for landlords, integrate energy poverty reduction targets into their strategy, and prioritize measurable regulatory interventions. Municipalities, such as Antwerp, should adapt to regional strategies and provide educational support in collaboration with energy houses. Market parties should develop business models that demonstrate the financial benefits of energy efficiency renovations to both landlords and tenants and offer temporary dwellings. By studying Flemish and European renovation strategies, analyzing barriers and policy instruments, and considering the Flemish context, this research aims to answer the question of how policy instruments can be implemented to achieve Flemish targets for energy efficiency renovations and reduce energy poverty in the private rental sector. ... Read more

Indonesia has ambitious targets to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 29 to 41% by 2030 and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. The residential sector in Indonesia consumes close to fifty percent of the country’s overall electricity demand. In the last decade, the residential demand for power has doubled, indicating a substantial rise. As a country with more than 17,000 islands, it is crucial to tackle the global warming implications including rising sea levels, significant drought risk, and rainfall fluctuations due to increased emissions arising from the surging energy consumption of Indonesia. Renewable energy installations, especially solar rooftop, and energy efficiency initiatives are some effective strategies to reduce Indonesia’s household emissions. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to study the decarbonisation potential of the residential sector’s supply and demand sides through energy-efficient appliances, efficient building envelope design, and rooftop PV deployment. This report majorly addresses the research gap in evaluating the impact of continuous revision to appliance performance standards and the impact of current efficiency standards fixed by the government. To answer the research problem, three scenarios from 2023 to 2030 are designed; business as usual, government policy, and ambitious. Using the bottom-up stock model method, the projected electricity consumption of four appliances (air conditioner, refrigerator, rice cooker, and LED lamps) was determined. For rooftop PV, the electricity production was forecasted using the PVwatts software, and scenarios were created based on government targets, and considering the high rooftop PV growth in Vietnam. Finally, the policy recommendations were proposed after analysing the electricity saved, mitigated emissions, and generating costs saved in these scenarios from the residential sector.
The analysis of Indonesia’s residential demand sector revealed that efficient building envelope and appliance alone can cut the residential sector’s electricity use by 18% by 2030. In addition, it was observed that the energy consumption of appliances could stabilise by 2030 as a consequence of aggressive energy efficiency policy measures. Among the four appliances analysed, air conditioners provide the largest energy savings (about 60 percent) due to their higher energy use and greater household penetration in coming years as a result of urbanisation and higher living standards. Existing mandated efficiency standards for refrigerators are well below the average efficiency in the market, preventing energy savings and market transformation to- wards efficient appliances. Significant financial savings owing to the elimination of fossil fueled power generation due to demand-side interventions amount to two billion US dollars. While analysing the supply side of Indonesia’s residential sector, it was observed that in ambitious scenario for rooftop PV may reach 79 GW by 2030 which would lead to decarbonisation of the supply side of residential side by 50%. In the optimistic scenario, the rooftop PV penetration in households could reach 64% by 2030, considering 1 kWp per house and the total rooftop area required for rooftop PV could be around 250 million square metres. The savings on the supply side resulting from the elimination of fossil fuel generation are close to 6 billion dollars. Considering the demand and supply interventions, the net demand for energy from the grid in the residential sector of Indonesia could be 165 TWh, 130 TWh, and 57 TWh under the three different decarbonisation scenarios. These measures can cut the net electricity consumption
from grid in the residential sector by 65%. These demand and supply solutions would enable Indonesia to achieve at least 20 percent of its NDC target by 2030, which is crucial given that the current emission contribution of residential buildings in Indonesia is close to 16%. The results clearly demonstrate the enormous potential for decarbonising the residential sector in Indonesia, both on the supply and demand sides.
This analysis resulted in some policy recommendations, one of which is that Indonesia could revise energy performance thresholds for appliances every two years as energy savings could double as compared to a scenario following the current revision cycle. The current efficiency standard for refrigerator is non impactful and may be ratcheted up soon. Like in the case of Vietnam, the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) could potentially increase the deployment of rooftop PV, so it is suggested to implement FiT for rooftop PV in Indonesia. For further research, it is suggested that financial constraints and economic impact of energy efficiency solutions from consumers’ perspective could be explored, energy savings from other widely used appliances like fans, CFL lamps could be investigated and the impact of setting minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) for rooftop PV in Indonesia could be further analysed. ... Read more

Collaborations and partnerships between supplying parties are of great importance for adopting circular principles in the built environment and should be investigated within the development of circular supply chain management (CSCM). Therefore, the focus of this research is on collaboration opportunities within CSCM, where the need for active and dynamic actor networks, supply chain learning, future visions and circular business models will be discussed in more detail. During this research I worked together with the Municipality of Rotterdam through an internship. They also found research into collaboration opportunities within CSCM interesting and necessary. Besides, they added that they wondered what the role of the municipality could and should be in supporting (local) circular supply chain collaboration (CSCC) in order to scale up the circular renovation of the private housing stock in Rotterdam. Therefore, the ultimate goal of this research is advising the Municipality of Rotterdam on their position in this innovative process of CSCC. To achieve this goal, this research focusses on the following research question: How could CSCC be facilitated by municipalities to achieve upscaling of circular renovation of Dutch owner-occupied housing? First, an analysis into the state-of-the-art has been carried out, which has looked into the current circular construction and renovation concepts and principles being used in Europe, the Netherlands and the city of Rotterdam. Based on this analysis, the following research variables have been identified, which needed to be further investigated: adoption of innovations, actor networks, supply chain learning, future visions and circular business models. Second, a literature review is given of relevant theories and concepts related to these variables, which has identified the main research indicators that I wanted to use to reflect upon during and after the empirical part of the research (listed in the theoretical framework). Third, a stakeholder analysis has been carried out, consisting of two phases of semi-structured interviews, an (additional) internal survey and a focus group discussion. In the first interview phase, interviews were held with public parties, including municipalities, universities and knowledge institutions. In the second interview phase, interviews were held with private parties and civil organizations, including actors of different (local) market parties, branch organizations within the building sector and interest groups for homeowners. This analysis has resulted in four main barriers of CSCC in which the municipality could exert influence: insufficient internal integration, insufficient communication, insufficient realisation and insufficient facilitation. To find more clarity with regard to the first main barrier, an internal survey was circulated within the municipality, which provided more insights from a broader group of employees from different clusters and departments. The remaining three main barriers have been discussed within a focus group, where I have investigated from a management perspective whether the suggested opportunities in terms of (more) concrete strategies mentioned by different stakeholders, will work or not to solve these identified barriers and mismatches in practice. Fourth, the results of the stakeholder analysis have been compared with literature, examining the importance of obtained solutions for the identified mismatches in more detail. This has resulted in an advisory action plan for the Municipality of Rotterdam, which states that the municipality should act as a director and should focus more on the following main tasks: (1) Internal integration: stimulate and coordinate internal integration between colleagues, visions, ambitions and social challenges of different clusters and departments. (2) Communication: create an open, transparent and accessible local communication network between public and private parties, including the municipality, knowledge institutions, market parties, interest groups for homeowners and residents. (3) Realisation: implement developed circular and modular building and renovation ideas, principles and concepts, starting with designating municipal buildings and public space where the local market is given the opportunity to experiment. (4) Facilitation: offer various municipal (learning) tools to help the local market in the start-up phase, like (online) theme sessions, comprehensive courses and teaching programs/workshops. The full advice is drawn up on the basis of these four main tasks. Practical recommendations are given that could be a positive stimulus for CSCC to achieve upscaling of circular renovation of Dutch owner-occupied housing. These recommendations answer the main research question. ... Read more

With the current climate challenges that we currently face, we also need to take a look at the existing operation of the systems to which we are so accustomed. Within the EU, there are policies to make the housing stock energy neutral by 2050. However, this sentiment is not shared internationally. Within the EU, there are several options made available for making renovation of existing stock more financially feasible, with models provided by initiatives such as STUNNING, REVALUE, or ABRACADABRA to name a few. Though the EU has options made available, this is not the case for the rest of the world. The research focuses on the applicability of the aforementioned options available in the EU to a Middle Eastern context through the creation of a scenario building using aggregation methods and using a sensitivity and Monte Carlo analysis to check the performance of each financial model. The research also combines the
financial with other technical frameworks such as finding optimum insulation thicknesses and its influence on the pay back periods. The research works in 4 parts, creating a model building through aggregate modeling and frameworks, running the financial dashboard based on the characteristics of the model building and doing a sensitivity and Monte Carlo analysis, then finally an interview is conducted with experts, showing them the data of the model building and then asking about the limitations of said financial models. The applications are reviewed in a foreign context, in this case Kuwait, and
in addition, the effects of the large scale application of these models are examined in the literature review. The results show that financially speaking, it is completely feasible to apply these models within Kuwait, and in fact they work better than they do in western contexts because of the avoidance of the landlord-tenant conflict since landlords are responsible for paying utility fees. On average, given Kuwait’s current inflation rates, electricity prices, water prices and average rental rate per m2, we are seeing an average of a 4 year payback period on a major rehabilitation, without even the need for a real estate reevaluation. The micro economic results are also compared with studies made on macro-economic knock on effects of mass renovation within the country, and it was found that it was feasible. Through the interviews, however, it was found that though there are few barriers in the financial sense, there is a lack of understanding and need for a larger investigation into the sociological and behavioral barriers found within this context. ... Read more