Overcoming financial barriers for making transition happen: A proposal to retrofit privately owned buildings for energy efficiency in Frankfurt am Main

Reducing energy demand by 50% by 2050 is one of the two core components of the City of Frankfurt’s “Master Plan 100% Climate Protection”. According to this ambitious Master Plan, Frankfurt aims to reduce its current energy demand by half and to cover the remaining half through renewable energy. Since households account for 22% of Frankfurt’s current energy demand, the achievement of the energy efficiency target largely hinges on private homeowners’ ability to retrofit their buildings. However, homeowners’ ability to retrofit their buildings for energy efficiency has so far been hampered by the high cost of retrofitting and lack of adequate financial resources. Despite the presence of some financial schemes designed to address this problem (at the national level), Frankfurt does not have adequate and coordinated retrofit-financing scheme tailored to its specific situation. We consider this to be a serious problem and major stumbling block in Frankfurt’s effort to become energy efficient and thereby attain its 100% renewable energy vision. Against this backdrop, we came up with a solution that is capable of overcoming the financial barriers preventing private homeowners in the City of Frankfurt from retrofitting their buildings for energy efficiency. Our financial solution is designed in such a way that homeowners virtually pay noting to get their building retrofitted. The scheme will enable homeowners to get a government subsidy plus long term, low interest rate retroFrank loans, which will be paid back through energy saving over time.