Employment Impacts of a Large-Scale Deep Building Energy Retrofit Programme in Hungary

In Hungary buildings are key to the climate challenge: they contribute approximately half of energy-related CO2 emissions. This sector has been shown to have the highest cost-effective climate change mitigation potential in Hungary.

If the energy efficiency of the Hungarian building stock is improved, not only can this reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, but it can also advance several other important social, political and economic policy agendas, including the improvement of energy security, reduction of fuel poverty, as well as improved air and life quality and health.  An especially important co-benefit of a programme aiming at a large-scale and deep renovation of the Hungarian building stock is the potential net employment gains, particularly as Hungary is the Member State with the second worst employment rate in the EU.

This lecture presents preliminary results based on different scenarios for a large-scale building energy retrofit programme in Hungary, differentiated by the yearly rate of renovations and the depth of the retrofits. Case studies and macroeconomic tools are used to estimate direct and indirect impacts of the programme on employment in Hungary.

The outputs include a set of estimates related to the retrofit programme: investments involved, forecasted reduction in energy consumption and qualitative and quantitative estimates of the net impacts of the intervention on the Hungarian labour market.