€90 bln needed to realise deep buildings renovation investments for EU’s post Covid-19 recovery

(22 May 2020) A new analysis by BPIE shows that the EU Recovery Package should earmark €90 billion public funding annually until 2050 towards building renovation for EU-27. This is needed to release an investment potential estimated at €243 billion per year.

The European Commission will present a stimulus programme next week, to help the EU economy recover from the COVID-19 crisis. The “Renovation Wave” strategy for buildings will be released in September 2020.

The total investment opportunity for deep renovation of Europe’s buildings is estimated at €243 billion per year, but it would need the €90 bln funding for leverage.

The €90 billion should be allocated with €76 billion in support of building renovation, and an additional €14 billion provided in an innovation fund to scale up serial renovation of buildings on an industrial scale, according to BPIE.

Oliver Rapf, Executive Director at BPIE says, “The scale of the investment opportunity is enormous, and while large figures for the economic recovery are currently featuring high in the political debate, we are presenting an updated analysis what investment is needed to deeply renovate Europe’s buildings.”

Rapf continues, “As Europe is discussing the scale of an unparalleled recovery programme to mitigate the damage of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become clear that renovation of the European building stock would create a triple benefit. It would lead to an increase in economic activity, retaining and creating employment; it would support the achievement of Europe’s climate and energy targets, and it would provide Europeans with better and healthier buildings.”

View the report here