Non-Technical Barriers to Energy Efficient Renovation of Residential Buildings and Potential Policy Instruments to overcome Them—Evidence from Young Russian Adults

Abstract

Several scientific articles discuss non-technical barriers and policy instruments related to energy efficient building renovation. However, they are seldom systematically categorized and hardly ever related to Russian context even if Russian housing provides remarkable potential for energy-efficiency improvements. This paper identifies non-technical barriers to building energy renovations and potential policy instruments to overcome these barriers. The study was carried out by using the following methods: first, we mapped the barriers and policy instruments addressed in renovation-related studies. Following this step, we studied the importance of barriers and the feasibility of various policy instruments in and with a few selected Russian experts. The outcome of the interviews indicates that standards, information dissemination and awareness raising are the most efficient instruments to promote energy renovations of buildings in Russia. Both students and the interviewed Russian experts shared the view that the role of the Government is highly important regarding introduction of these instruments.

A comprehensive review of obstacles and drivers to building energy-saving technologies and their association with research themes, types of buildings, and geographic regions

“…After examining 450 publications concerned with BEE technologies, from 2000 to 2018, only 58 dealt with barriers; of these, only eight [6,34,40,42,43,[46][47][48] presented some kind of classification, or taxonomy, to the barriers, ranging from three to five categories. This means that it is quite possible that none of the articles presented all of the barriers, making it necessary to search the literature to identify all of the barriers.…”

Barriers to the adoption of energy-efficient technologies in the building sector: A survey of Brazil

“…Currently, the guidelines describing the procedures are fuzzy, difficult to understand and use [51]. It is important to make labelling procedures as transparent as possible, providing simple procedures, good examples, documented reports and education [50].…”

“…According to Hirst and Brown [33], Zhang et al [36], Goodier and Chmutia [52], Du et al [57] BEE technologies requires high investments. Usually BEE technologies are more expensive than their inefficient counterparts are [6,29,38,44,45,50,69]. Additional money to pay the incremental capital costs of efficiency improvements can be a problem, since the financial limitations of owners are the major obstacle for lowincome households [58,61].…”

“…Only a limited number of countries like China [6,30,36,[43][44][45], New Zealand [46], Italy [26], Australia [46,47], Finland [35], Ghana [37,38], Norway [48,49], Russia [50], Cambodia [51], the United Kingdom [52,53], Germany [48,49] and the United States [54] carried out such a check.…”

Critical Performance Aspects of Retrofitting Apartment Buildings Using a Multifunctional Façade System

“…Furthermore, an ageing population, migration, and changing lifestyles and family structures all place new demands on housing [4]. New construction in Europe represents about 1% of the building stock annually [3], while the renovation rate has been quite low at 1.2% per year [5], resulting in initiatives to boost it [6]. Even if many barriers are non-technical [7] and recent projects have developed new solutions [2], reliable and easy-to-install technologies are still needed.…”