The politics of the German CO2-Building Rehabilitation Programme

The German CO2-Building Rehabilitation Programme is widely considered as a very successful policy to reduce energy consumption from existing homes. Most assessments of the programme focused on the economics and technical aspects, but so far an analysis of the political processes that led to the creation and development of the CO2-Building Rehabilitation Programme is missing. Covering 10 years of the programme’s history, this paper analyses the most important policy changes that happened over time and links them to various policy drivers. It shows that politics did indeed play an important role and can explain many of the changes that occurred.