Towards large-scale roll out of “integrated home renovation services” in Europe

In the residential sector, the market offer for sustainable energy upgrades is fragmented, composed of a myriad of micro and small companies, and mostly uncoordinated. Meanwhile, most homeowners lack the capacity to set-up and supervise complex and ambitious projects. Furthermore, many face obstacles in accessing the necessary up-front financial resources. As highlighted in the Renovation Wave initiative of the European Green Deal, there is a need to develop a coordinated and coherent response to the needs of homeowners, in order to make their renovation process as painless as possible.

In this paper, Christophe Milin and Adrien Bullier from the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) present a review of various initiatives that aim at developing integrated service offers for the energy renovation of private housing. After clarifying the concept of Integrated Home Renovation Services and positioning it in the current market offer related to home renovation, the paper analyses each step of the customer journey and illustrate how the user experience could be improved, based on local experiences. The authors propose an empirical typology identifying three main models: advice, support and implementation, and the provision of finance as an additional option and discuss how integrated home renovation services could be facilitated and rolled-out throughout the EU.