This research project will systematically and comprehensively record non-residential buildings. In a step-by-step process, relevant data for modernisation such as the structure and condition of the buildings, their energy efficiency as well as influencing factors for decision-making processes will be surveyed. This will enable the non-residential building sector to be researched in a statistically robust and cost-effective manner. This therefore also provides a basis for regular monitoring that can be used to check during the further course and at a reasonable cost whether the energy and climate protection targets can also be achieved in the building sector.

For steering Germany’s energy transition, detailed information about the energy state, modernisation trends and effectiveness of the instruments used are also required in the building sector. In the “Building Stock Database” project, the Institute for Housing and the Environment (IWU) has demonstrated that such a database can be created for the residential building sector. The aim is now to achieve the same for the non-residential building sector, whose base population, in contrast to residential buildings, is not even roughly described by the official statistics.

Over previous decades, repeated attempts have already been made to close the gaps in knowledge about the quantity, structure and energy requirements of non-residential buildings. However, quantitative data on the quantity and area of the existing building stock was predominantly determined for subsectors, whereby both secondary statistical analyses as well as isolated, non-representative surveys were used. The methodological quality of these individual surveys does not enable, however, an unbiased extrapolation for all non-residential buildings in Germany in their entirety.

The “Non-residential buildings research database” project aims to answer various research questions by collecting primary data to record the structure and energy efficiency of non-residential buildings in Germany.