The building sector causes the highest share of CO₂ emissions in Europe (36%) and consumes most of its final energy (40%). The cost-effective potential of the sector to move to a zero-emission building stock by 2050 is proven, but the implementation of policies and programmes which would transform the sector is slow. Even if the revised Energy Performance of Buildings directive requires Member States to introduce policies to achieve a highly efficient and decarbonised building stock by 2050, the building sector can neither be changed by mandating the use of specific materials/technologies/techniques, nor by adopting a “one fits all” policy approach, given the diversity of building types, architectural styles, ownership and user profiles across Europe. Innovative, ambitious and well-tailored policies are therefore needed.

The Buildings Policy Innovation Exchange (BPIX) project, managed by BPIE and funded by EIT-Climate KIC, with co-funding from ECF, UTC, Eurima, Danfoss and Rockwool, will explore the opportunity and feasibility to create a web-based exchange and learning platform to identify and disseminate innovative policies for deep renovation. The project will design and develop an approach to replicate and scale up innovative policies for deep renovation, in view of the future creation of the Building Policy Innovation Exchange (BPIX) platform.

This workshop to explore ways of helping decision makers develop innovative policies. We will share some ideas on how policy innovation is defined and how it is applied to building renovation, and we will discuss approaches and ideas to boost policy innovation in the areas of deep renovation through better gathering and sharing of experiences (including financing building upgrades and triggering new business models/service offers). The main goal of this workshop is to design and develop an approach to replicate and scale up innovative policies for deep renovation.

The results of the workshop will be used to identify what drives innovative policy making and to create a roadmap to boost the design and replication of policy innovation for renovation.

Discussion points:

• What is policy innovation when referred to building renovation?
• What are the drivers for policy innovation?
• What are the needs and opportunities to improve the design of effective policy innovation for energy renovations?
• How to foster new ideas to upscale the decarbonisation of the European building stock through policy innovation for energy renovations?
• What kind of knowledge dissemination techniques can better support local and regional policy makers to increase successful deep renovation policy innovations?