6.8 Policies to promote GHG mitigation in buildings

Preceding sections have demonstrated the high potential for reducing GHG emissions in buildings through cost-effective energy-efficiency measures and distributed (renewable) energy generation technologies. The previous section has demonstrated that even the cost-effective part of the potential is unlikely to be captured by markets alone, due to the high number of barriers. Although there is no quantitative or qualitative evidence in the literature, it is possible that barriers to the implementation of economically attractive GHG reduction measures are the most numerous and strongest in the building sector, especially in households. Since policies can reduce or eliminate barriers and associated transaction costs (Brown, 2001), special efforts targeted at removing the barriers in the buildings sector may be especially warranted for GHG mitigation efforts.

Sections 6.8.1–6.8.5 describe a selection of the major instruments summarized in Table 6.6 that complement the more general discussion of Chapter 13, with a focus on policy tools specific to or specially applied to buildings. The rest of Table 6.6 is discussed in Section 6.8.5.