From the household up: renovation dynamics in the French and Swiss owner-occupied residential building stock

Energy-efficient renovations are a key decarbonisation strategy in Europe, targeted towards ageing building stocks that rely on fossil fuels. However, tracking renovation progress is challenging due to limited data; household renovation activities and motivations are not represented by official statistics. This study takes an actor-driven approach to model building stock renovation dynamics, drawing on survey data (N = 1,603) collected in 2023 from owner-occupiers in the Lémanic region, a cross-border region spanning western Switzerland and eastern France. We analysed past renovation actions, future intentions, and drivers and constraints. We clustered responses into household–dwelling groups, by combining the socio-demographic characteristics of households (e.g., composition, income) with the physical characteristics of their dwellings (e.g., construction period, size). We found that annualised energy-efficient renovation rates ranged from 0.4–2.8% between household–dwelling groups, and the rate of intervention per building component (envelope, heating systems, energy installations) differed up to seven-fold. Organisational barriers constrained renovation intentions even where technical potential was high, and financial incentives alone were insufficient to motivate energy renovation among households who perceived their dwelling’s energy performance as adequate, even in cases where the energy label was low (D–E). PV installations and air-cooling systems exhibited the most rapid acceleration in past and projected future uptake. The results are relevant to policy makers; as renovation intentions are not evenly distributed over the dwelling stock, there is an opportunity to target support and monitoring to household–dwelling groups with low energy performance and low renovation intentions.