The work carried out by Copenhagen Economics for the Renovate Europe Campaign broke new ground in the debate around the benefits of investing in energy efficiency and has, in several ways, advanced the EU agenda in this topic. In executing the contract for us, Copenhagen Economics were professional, impartial and eloquent. I would unhesitatingly use their services again.

The main aim of this report is to contribute to the exchange of good practices and to support EU MS by providing potential ideas for the elaboration of long-term renovation plans. The report compiles renovation requirements as well as financial instruments, support programmes and market mechanisms for building renovation in a number of countries and regions. While the main focus of the report is on selected EU MS, a few global examples are also presented.

The demand for green buildings and to what extent firms will pay a premium price compared to conventional buildings is a lively debate. Policy instruments like the Swiss CO2-enactment and the Swiss Building Program encourage and incentivize investments in energy-efficient properties. Based on a corporate real estate survey, I investigate the premium percentage price firms are willing to pay for green buildings. On average, Swiss corporations are willing to pay a premium price of 3.0% for leasing, 4.75% for purchasing, and 5.0% for retrofitting.

This report is the first report of the ‘Energy Savings 2030’-project which seeks to help the Coalition for Energy Savings to produce a robust and timely input to the 2030 policy discussion. It brings together and summarises recent empirical evidence on costs and benefits of energy efficiency measures. The evidence gap in terms of reliable ex-post data is well known. In the majority of cases results from ex-ante modelling studies inform the debate. The research carried out for this report confirms the persistent gap in publicly available ex-post evaluations of energy efficiency programmes.

In April 2010 the Tokyo Metropolitan Government launched the Tokyo Cap-and-Trade Program to reduce energy consumption-related CO2 emissions at the city level. This is the world's first cap-and-trade programme to cover buildings in the commercial, industrial and public sectors. Its main aim is to reduce CO2 emissions from energy consumption in existing buildings in urban areas; therefore, it is called an ‘urban cap-and-trade programme’.