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Avoiding the climate emergency requires going beyond the current set of policy measures. Instead, the concept of sufficiency needs to be adapted and applied to today’s environmental and societal challenges. This would provide clear metrics that are equitable and within the Earth’s ecological limits. The application of sufficiency to policies for building stock would provide a decent living standard for all and have a significant impact on limiting global warming.
Greening Europe’s homes and public spaces is a crucial element of the EU’s strategy towards climate neutrality, and one of the pillars of the European Green Deal. But to achieve its goals, the EU will need to come up with a comprehensive strategy for energy and resource efficiency while also ensuring that sustainable homes become an affordable solution for all citizens.
Sufficiency policies are a set of measures and daily practices that avoid the demand for energy, materials, land, water, and other natural resources over the lifecycle of buildings and goods while delivering wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries.
