> Frankly, I'm surprised that certain nations haven't mandated these technologies seeing as they would give a nation a competitive edge over other nations who d

> Frankly, I'm surprised that certain nations haven't mandated these technologies seeing as they would give a nation a competitive edge over other nations who did not. Germany and Switzerland sure are! Well, not "mandating" as such, but * subsidizing it for private buildings * mandating for public buildings The general goal seems to be around 40 kWh/(m^2 a), with additional incentives/targets to go to full passive (i.e. net zero energy usage). Unfortunately, most of the reading material is German (at least on Wikipedia) :(. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minergie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minergie and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house are good starting points in English. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effizienzhaus https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effizienzhaus (German) has some details on the subsidies. Without knowing too much about real estate prices in Germany right now, the available loans to refurbish buildings seem to be in the order of somewhere between "certainly worth it when buying a decrepit old house in a flyover state like Brandenburg" and "well I guess if we're already building a new house, we might as well take out this low-interest loan and build it energy efficient as well".