{"id":13672,"date":"2026-07-22T00:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T22:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webecpol.esade.edu\/publicaciones\/an-x-ray-of-the-reforms-to-improve-the-energy-efficiency-of-homes-in-spain\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T13:38:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T11:38:00","slug":"an-x-ray-of-the-reforms-to-improve-the-energy-efficiency-of-homes-in-spain","status":"publish","type":"publicaciones","link":"http:\/\/webecpol.esade.edu\/en\/publications\/an-x-ray-of-the-reforms-to-improve-the-energy-efficiency-of-homes-in-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"An X-ray of the reforms to improve the energy efficiency of homes in Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Adapting homes to use the energy consumed by the household that lives in them as efficiently as possible is one of the factors that most determines their living conditions, and its importance keeps growing: rising energy prices have increased the cost of living in an inefficient home, and climate change is intensifying thermal stress, above all summer heat. Maximizing that efficiency can be achieved in two ways: expanding the stock with new construction or renovating what already exists. Spain is making little progress on either. As regards the renewal of the stock, only 6.6% of the population lives in homes built after 2011; between January 2021 and December 2025 barely some 465,000 homes were completed for more than 1.2 million net new households created; and 61.1% of the population aged 16 or over lives in homes built between 1961 and 2000. This brief addresses the second path and presents a systematic analysis of the determinants of residential renovation in Spain based on the microdata from the energy efficiency (2023) and energy and environment (2025) modules of the INE Living Conditions Survey.<\/p>\n<p>From this review, the following results emerge for 2025:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>4% of the population report needing improvements to their home and not having been able to carry them out in the last five years: this is the real potential demand for renovation. 45.3% do not need them, and only 19.3% live in households that have carried them out (14.6% in 2023).<\/li>\n<li>The declared need for improvements grows with the age of the home (around 65% in those built before 1960), and unmet need accumulates where an old stock and low income intersect: 53.2% versus 24.3% between the extreme quartiles in homes built in 1945\u20131960. Moreover, those who renovate tend to do so as a package: around 70% undertake three or more improvements at once.<\/li>\n<li>Cost is the most frequently declared reason for not renovating: it is so for 78% of those who need it. In addition, especially in flats, the category of other reasons (heritage protections or lack of agreement among neighbours) then appears, rising from 5% as a reason in detached single-family homes to 14% in buildings with fewer than 10 dwellings and to 17% in those with more than 10.<\/li>\n<li>Among those who need improvements, owners rise from 29% completion in the lowest income quartile to 51% in the highest; in rented housing income barely moves the needle (from 17% to 22%): a sign that the owner bears the cost and the tenant captures the improvement.<\/li>\n<li>In 2023 (the year for which we have data), among households using renewable energy, renovation is much more frequent in owner-occupied housing (44.2%) than in rented housing (11%); in rented housing, the source with the highest renovation percentage is biomass (41.2%).<\/li>\n<li>Navarre (27.9%), the Basque Country (26.7%) and the Balearic Islands (26.6%) lead the improvements in 2025, and the Basque Country is the best at targeting (53.4% completion among those who needed them). The renovation gap between households with and without risk of poverty, among those who need improvements, ranges from 4.1 points in Navarre to about 26 in Asturias and Aragon, and protected renovation falls from 69,713 to 53,830 case files between 2023 and 2025, concentrated\u2014well above their population share\u2014in the two chartered communities.<\/li>\n<li>The above results are descriptive. When estimating probabilities holding the rest of the factors constant, need is set by age, in line with what was seen in the previous points: living in a home built before 1980 raises the probability of needing improvements by around 23 percentage points relative to one built after 2000 (and the 1981\u20132000 bracket by 13.5 points), well above income.<\/li>\n<li>Execution, by contrast, is set by tenure and income: renting subtracts almost 18 points, the highest quartile adds another 18, and living in the Basque Country or Navarre also raises it clearly, while age ceases to be significant.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In light of this diagnosis, we propose considering eight lines of action: targeting instruments on the real potential demand (the intersection of maximum age and low income) instead of subsidizing the entire stock; sizing support to overcome the entry threshold; reducing the transaction costs of neighbourly agreement in horizontal (co-owned) property; providing subsidy and technical support to low-income households; informing them proactively and in a personalized way about existing aid; realigning incentives specifically for owner and tenant in rented housing; redirecting effort toward summer thermal stress; and strengthening administrative capacity for processing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Adapting homes to use the energy consumed by the household that lives in them as efficiently as possible is one of the factors that most determines their living conditions, and its importance keeps growing: rising energy prices have increased the cost of living in an inefficient home, and climate change is intensifying thermal stress, above [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13665,"template":"","acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - 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