Many studies have investigated different aspects in the decarbonisation of the European housing stock. However, a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the literature on the diffusion of energy efficiency technologies is still missing. We conducted a bibliometric analysis to better understand the knowledge base in the field energy efficiency technology diffusion in the European residential building stock. After the scanning and screening process, we identified 954 scientific articles pertinent to this topic.

This rapid review identified two results extracted from the eight studies (published between 2013 and 2018) that fulfilled our inclusion criteria. Firstly, our analysis identified five common themes across the included studies which provide tentative information for what would be needed to make low carbon residential retrofit/renovation policy work. Secondly, we make an overall observation that the included studies did not provide sufficient evidence or establish conclusive results about the effectiveness of specific low carbon policies compared to other policies.

A Global Survey of Building Energy Efficiency Policies in Cities is a resource for city officials around the world as they design new policies for building energy efficiency, or review existing ones. The research should help close the evidence gap regarding city-level activity in building energy efficiency. As such, it is designed to be accessible to those working in the field in general, including researchers.