The revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) is ambitious, and many countries around Europe are lagging behind in the implementation. However, several innovative demonstration projects have been realised around Europe as part of research and innovation projects around Europe. The demonstration projects serve as lighthouses to guide the wider implementation to net zero emission buildings and neighbourhoods.

Lack of finance is considered to be one of the key barriers to improving buildings’ energy efficiency at a speed and scale that is required. Beyond the financing gap, the built environment is a complex network of stakeholders, financial barriers, and mixed incentives, which all need to align and be overcome to speed up the decarbonisation of EU’s housing stock.

In this session we learnt the experiences from innovative demonstration projects of net zero emission and plus energy neighbourhoods around Europe, as well as the viewpoints of key stakeholders along the value chain. Moreover, the discussions policy measures needed to finance and scale up such projects around Europe. The main outcome  are list of policy recommendations for private and public decision-makers are published in this policy recommendation here.