Blueprints for Change: Why Central and Eastern Europe Needs Strategic Building Renovation Plans?
As Europe races toward climate neutrality, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) offers a rare opportunity to turn ambition into action. At the heart of its implementation lies the national building renovation plan – a strategic tool Member States have to create for a consistent policy framework for building decarbonisation. More than a compliance exercise, the renovation plan should serve as a blueprint for translating scattered, often short-term measures into coherent long-lasting transformations that pave the way toward a zero-emission building stock by 2050.
In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), as in other parts of Europe, the need for a strategic vision for building decarbonisation is particularly acute. Yet the CEE region faces a unique combination of challenges from aging and inefficient buildings to high rates of energy poverty and a limited administrative capacity to deliver large-scale renovation programs. Furthermore, building policies in many CEE countries have been reactive, fragmented and heavily reliant on EU funding cycles rather than embedded in long-term national strategies.
National building renovation plans offer a critical opportunity to break this cycle by providing a consistent, forward-looking vision for building decarbonisation. For CEE countries, renovation plans are not just a planning tool, they represent a catalyst for unlocking systemic reforms and ensuring that building decarbonisation becomes a pillar for both energy security and social cohesion.
How to do so?
Planning with purpose
National building renovation plans should serve as a strategic backbone for building decarbonisation, bringing together all relevant policies, measures, and investment needs into one coherent framework. In CEE countries, renovation plans can ensure greater continuity and alignment across programs by functioning as a central reference point for decision-making. They should not merely reflect what exists but actively guide the long-term planning of building decarbonisation, providing a structured approach to designing both immediate responses and sustained interventions in an aligned way. Additionally, by being a repository of investments and financing sources, the renovation plans can ensure funding continuity for renovations, helping policymakers navigate various financing streams both public and private. When renovation plans offer a clear, long-term roadmap, they create predictability and foster public trust, turning building decarbonisation efforts into a unifying collective action.
Breaking the silos
In many CEE countries, the responsibility for building renovation is spread across a fragmented landscape of ministries, agencies, and local authorities, often with minimal coordination between them. As a result, renovation actions tend to be siloed, with little alignment between policy measures, funding programs, and regulatory instruments. Given the holistic nature of national building renovation plans, which must encompass a wide range of measures and investments for decarbonising the building stock, their effective elaboration will require active collaboration between different ministries and across various governance levels.
Ministries responsible for energy, environment, housing, finance, but also cultural heritage, employment, and local governments must come together to ensure coherence in planning and avoid duplicating efforts. Moreover, this collaboration should go beyond a mere exchange of information and strive to leverage synergies between the various provisions of the EPBD. Additionally, the work on national building renovation plans needs to be aligned with other national strategies, such as National Energy and Climate Plans and Social Climate Plans, ensuring consistency between the building sector’s decarbonisation actions and broader national energy and climate goals as well as social requirements.
A plan for all
Public participation and stakeholder involvement are essential to ensure social acceptability and credibility for renovation plans. Given the social sensitivity of building policies, especially in regions affected by high rates of energy poverty and poor housing conditions, early and inclusive dialogue is vital to ensure that planned measures reflect real needs and local realities.
Without this, policymakers might risk designing renovation plans that are technically sound but socially disconnected and difficult to implement on the ground. Importantly, stakeholder involvement should not be limited to the drafting phase. Continuous engagement throughout implementation is essential to monitor progress, adapt measures and ensure accountability.
Tracking progress
There is indeed a gap in understanding the effects and effectiveness of building policies, especially in countries where institutional capacity and reliable data are limited. Beyond its role as a strategic planning tool, the national building renovation plan can be a valuable monitoring and reporting instrument. By compiling all relevant policies, measures and investments related to building decarbonisation, the renovation plans can give governments a clear picture of how their building decarbonisation strategies are actually performing.
In this way, the renovation plans will strengthen public trust in the effectiveness and fairness of the building decarbonisation process and build legitimacy of climate action. A robust monitoring and evaluation framework will not only help improve policy outputs but will also represent a way to counteract and dismiss in an evidence-based manner a potential social – or even political – reluctance toward building policies.
For Central and Eastern Europe, the national building renovation plan is more than a bureaucratic exercise, it is a chance to create a coherent, collective, long-term vision for building decarbonisation. Through strategic planning, cross-collaboration and dialogue, renovation plans can do what piecemeal policies have long failed to achieve – align fragmented renovation actions, direct investments where they matter most, and chart a clear, credible path to climate neutrality for buildings. They offer governments the means to think long-term, act strategically, and engage citizens in a transformation that affects every home, school, and workplace. Crucially, they also provide the tools to measure progress, correct course when needed, and build the public trust essential for change. If done effectively, the national building renovation plans can become a cornerstone of not just decarbonisation, but resilience, social fairness, and cohesion.
About the author:
Denisa Diaconu is a Project Manager at Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE), managing projects on policy implementation and capacity building for public authorities. She is coordinating from BPIE’s side the EPBD.wise project, which provides direct support to national policymakers in implementing EPBD.
This article was written under the EPBD.wise project, which provides direct support to policymakers in six countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Ukraine) to design, implement and evaluate key provisions from the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD).