Europe’s energy crisis in data: Which countries have the best and worst insulated homes?
Europeans are deeply concerned about their heating bills, due to dramatic hikes in energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The European Commission has called on countries to prioritise insulating their buildings this winter.
But not all citizens are feeling the cold - or the pinch of energy bills - the same. Recent research shows that home temperature losses vary considerably across Europe.
These differences are down to the quality of building insulation, as outside temperatures were standardised at 0 °C for all countries analysed.
Home temperature losses are highest in the UK, which has the oldest housing stock: 37 per cent of homes in the UK were built before 1946.
Intelligent home climate management company tado° examined 80,000 homes in 11 European countries between December 2019 and January 2020 to reach this conclusion.
It found that a home in the UK with an indoor temperature of 20 °C and outside temperature of 0 °C loses 3 °C on average after five hours.
Norway with 0.9 °C and Germany with 1 °C are the countries with the lowest home temperature losses.
This means that UK homes are losing heat three times faster than houses in Norway and Germany.
The UK is followed by Belgium (2.9 °C), France (2.5 °C), the Netherlands (2.4 °C), and Spain (2.2 °C). Heat loss is higher in these five countries than the average loss (1.8 °C) of all evaluated countries.
Sweden, Denmark, and Austria all have average home temperature loss of 1.2 °C. In Italy, this value is 1.5 °C.
How old a home is has a big bearing on its heat loss - as well as a range of other energy efficiency measures.
In the UK, research by the Office of National Statistics - based on Energy Performance Certificates - shows that energy costs for older homes are
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