The building stock in Sweden is in great need of renovation, not least our single family houses. The need for renovation does not only consist of maintenance of the buildings, but also increased energy efficiency in order to reach set targets. It is not enough to only make changes to the heating systems, something that is especially common among single family houses in the form of switching to a heat pump, but improvements to the building envelope are also required. Extensive and a broad range of activities have been made for multifamily buildings but for single family houses only smaller, more directed activities have been made. This can partly be due to the difficulty of reaching out to the approximately two million single family house owners in the country who form a much diversified group, with different motivations and wishes (even within the same household), economic conditions and interest for energy renovation.
Dalarna University has previously performed a number of studies on energy renovation of single family houses from various perspectives, but no holistic study. This study aims to do a review of the knowledge in the field and also engage in a dialogue with chosen actors during seminars and workshops, in order to investigate how the development of energy renovation for single family houses can be moved forward on a national level.
The study shows that there is a large potential for energy renovation in the single family house stock, but also many barriers that must be overcome. These barriers are to a smaller degree technical, but instead other problem areas dominate such as financing, lack of suitable policy instruments, lack of knowledge among involved actors, regulations etc.. The study has not been able to identify good examples of frameworks covering all the necessary aspects in order to encourage single family house owners to perform energy renovations of sufficient scale. Additionally, the large number of actors required to undertake an extensive energy renovation means that a high level of knowledge, a wide network of contacts and a large commitment are required; something found in few single family house owners. There is also no clear stakeholder willing to engage in this type of turnkey design and building contracting for single family houses.
The overall assessment of the key actors involved in this pre study is that a broad commitment is required in order for the single family house sector significantly contributing to set targets for improved energy efficiency in buildings. The commitment must be long term as well as including multi- and interdisciplinary research and business development in order to lay the foundations for relevant and effective policy instruments and awareness increasing knowledge interventions.