Overview of EU Directives and Belgian Policies and Measures regarding Energy Savings at the household level

This paper provides an overview of EU Directives and Belgian policies and measures regarding energy savings at the household level. It is illustrated how European regulatory action addressing energy consumption by households sets the scene for the way in which energy use at the household level is tackled in Belgium. Another observation is that current policies and measures concerning lowering energy consumption at the household level heavily relies on promoting energy efficiency and only marginally address people’s energy behavior. As a result potential energy savings from efficiency improvements at the household level have to an important extent being offset by unadapted behavior. A key question is therefore ‘how can we ensure the gains from our efficiency strategies are used to deliver real energy savings’. The latter question opens up the discussion to include sufficiency, which implies changing our behaviour, in order to effectively realise energy savings.nrpages: 30status: publishe