TOLEDO, SPAIN, Housing Ministers heard from one of the EU’s top climate mitigation experts about how large-scale, deep retrofitting programmes across Europe could lead not only to substantial energy savings and greenhouse gas reductions, but also to a decline in dependency on fossil fuel from overseas, a substantial increase in jobs, and the alleviation of fuel poverty.

The project has been commissioned by the Energy Efficiency Programme of the European Climate Foundation and presented by Diana Urge-Vorsatz, Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Policy (3CSEP) at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, who outlined how much Member States have to gain economically, socially and environmentally from the large scale energy-efficient building renovations.

The report concludes that high efficiency renovations create more jobs, save more energy, reduce more emissions and decrease to a larger extent energy dependency.

To access the full report and executive summaries of the study in English and Hungarian, please visit:

Employment impacts of a large-scale deep building energy retrofit programme in Hungary