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The Swiss residential building sector consumes 30% of the end use energy. Improvements of energy effi-ciency in the building sector hence have an important impact on the countrys total energy consumption and thus on the reduction of CO2-emissions. In the planning of renovations of buildings, it is therefore crucial to value the possibility of an energy efficiency renovation that improves the energy efficiency of buildings and thereby decreases energy consumption. Renovation measures that improve the energy efficiency of buildings not only reduce the cost of space heating, but also improve comfort. Furthermore such investments are often economically interesting. However, it is often observed that home owners, and owners of single family homes in particular, often choose projects which do not improve the energy efficiency of the building. The present study, which has been financed by the Swiss Federal Office of En-ergy, aims to shed light on the decision making process of home owners when investing in retrofits of their building. The aims of the present study are the following: a) identification and discussion of market failures that justify an intervention of the state in the field of energy consumption in buildings; b) identi-fication and discussion of the most important factors that influence a homeowners decision when plan-ning a retrofit; c) identification and discussion of policy measures, which the state can adopt to encour-age homeowners to decide for an energy efficiency retrofits. To answer these questions, an extensive literature review and two surveys have been performed. The first survey collected data on past retrofit decision of single family house owners in the years 1996 to 2009. The second survey confronted home owners with hypothetical home renovation scenarios. In the following, we present the most important findings of the study. An intervention of the state is justified by the following reasons: a) the prices of energy services do not reflect all costs, which means that the market does not guarentee that the princi-ple of true cost and the polluter-pays-principle is applied; b) we locate an significant lack of information both among the homeowners themselves and also among specialists not only about the technical possi-bilities but also about the costs and benefits of energy efficiency retrofits. For these reasons, investment and cost calculations are predominantly performed in the short term and therefore not completely ra-tional. T
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