German and Norwegian policy approach to residential buildings’ energy efficiency—a comparative assessment

Buildings in private and domestic use are responsible for about 30% of the global greenhouse gas emissions attributable mainly to their need for heating and cooling energy. This corresponds to about 40% of the global final energy consumption. Therefore, a viable implementation of building energy efficiency policies is inevitable to realize a transformation of the energy system to mitigate climate change. Within the building sector lies a huge potential for emission reduction consisting in the renovation of the existing building stock and climate-friendly building guidelines applicable to new constructions, both adapting CO2-neutral technology solutions. However, as there are several different pathways leading to a decarbonized energy system, there is always the question which political and technological solutions are most efficient, effective, and feasible. This paper aims to analyze building efficiency policy measures and instruments and the related technological solutions in two front-runner countries of the energy transition, possessing different structural conditions: Germany and Norway. We hence apply a comparative approach which allows us to present and assess the policies in place. The paper answers three research questions: (1) Which policies prevail in Germany and Norway to foster the deployment of energy efficient and decarbonized solutions for residential buildings? (2) How do these policies respond to country-specific barriers to the energy transition in the building sector, and (3) What effects do they have on the actual implementation of technological and societal solutions? This research provides a new insight to the highly relevant topic of energy efficiency in buildings in the context of international Intended Nationally Determined Contribution benchmarking and discusses some unsolved trade-offs in the translation of the global climate governance into the national building sector.