High-ambitious local climate policies to reduce CO2 emissions: Municipal strategies to approach homeowners in the Netherlands

Municipalities are the constructors of local climate policies and the upholders of building law. But regarding the existing housing stock, they are lacking effective legal instruments to improve the energy efficiency of this stock, which is occupied by different homeowner categories. Regarding high-ambitious climate policies to reduce cities’ CO2 emissions, the research question of this paper is, how Dutch municipal authorities can reach different homeowner categories with policy instruments to instigate investments in and to increase the existing housing stock’s energy efficiency. This question is answered by a literature and documentary study, and by in-depth interviews. Municipal authorities try to fill the gap of legal enforcement instruments of energy efficiency measures in the existing housing stock: (1) by taking public-private district regeneration as vehicle for energy transition experiments in the existing housing stock, (2) by drawing up energy covenants with housing associations, (3) by integrating energy conservation strategies into improvement strategies for the private housing stock, in which service organizations for homeowners’ associations are established for taking care of organizational, technical and financing aspects of energy efficient maintenance or renovation, and (4) by posing structural maintenance and professional management as prerequisites to financial services. This does not mean that local actions can replace an effective, flanking national policy to improve the energy performance of the existing housing stock, but that the Dutch law must follow these actions to support them