Social resilience and safety

Renovation slashes energy bills and makes indoor environments more liveable

Deep and effective energy renovation offers a lasting solution that improves indoor living conditions while reducing energy waste and slashing average energy bills by 50 percent. 

Renovation helps reduce damp and moisture risks

Cold homes are also more prone to condensation, damp and mould—often because heat is lost too quickly through poorly performing building envelopes. Deep renovation can help stabilise indoor temperatures and reduce cold surfaces where condensation forms. The key is quality: renovation measures should be designed and installed correctly, with appropriate ventilation and moisture management.

Renovation supports healthier, more liveable indoor environments

As people spend most of their lives indoors, poor indoor environments have direct implications on their health. Cold homes and damp conditions are strongly linked to respiratory problems, driving avoidable illness and preventable demand on health services. Deep retrofits can improve indoor air quality and comfort while reducing pressures placed on public health services and their corresponding costs.

Renovation can strengthen fire resilience

Making Europe’s homes safer also means reducing how quickly a fire can spread and limiting toxic smoke. When choosing the non-combustible materials like stone wool, renovation offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create fire resilient homes that reduce risks to people and property and help protect what matters most to people – their homes and families. 

The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) offers important foundations to help set national initiatives in reducing energy consumption. It ensures that renovation efforts target the worst-performing buildings first — the very homes where energy-poor and vulnerable households live.

A combination of legislation and action are necessary to make the most effective impact on society. These include:

• Clear regulatory signals - triggering minimum energy performance standards when properties sell or change ownership
• Accessible financing and advisory support - ensuring no household, especially the most vulnerable, is left behind
• Deep energy renovation of building envelopes - improving resilience against both cold winters and increasingly dangerous heatwaves

Now is the moment to protect people where it matters most. Full and ambitious implementation of the EPBD — backed by credible national renovation plans, accessible financing and the skills to deliver — can upgrade the worst-performing buildings first and reduce exposure to cold, heat, damp and high energy bills. Done right, renovation strengthens social resilience and improves safety, including fire resilience, for decades.

Lasting benefits start with better materials

Renovation at scale is essential - but the real payoff depends on how we renovate. Constructed and renovated well, buildings can contribute to improving our health, wellbeing and productivity; reducing energy waste and costs; and strengthening local economies. Getting renovation right for the long-term entails using building materials that are durable, recyclable, and non-combustible, materials that will last for generations and can be recycled at end of their useful life. We have an opportunity to create a new generation of energy efficient, acoustically comfortable, aesthetically pleasing and fire-safe buildings - our homes, workplaces, schools, care facilities, and so much more. We need to get it right.