ALMOST every home in Spain wastes energy, and the country is not renovating them fast enough to meet its 2030 targets, a major new study has warned.
A staggering 94.2% of Spanish homes carry an energy rating between D and G, with most sitting at E, according to the State of Energy Efficiency in Spain 2026 report by analysts from Spain’s largest property valuation firm, Tinsa.
The culprit is age. New-build homes make up only about 4% of the housing stock, and most of the rest were built before any efficiency rules existed.
The gap is stark: 88% of certificates for new builds are rated A, B or C.
To meet its commitments, Spain must cut household energy use by 26,394 gigawatt hours by 2030.
That means insulating 1.2 million homes and replacing 3.5 million heating and hot water systems in just four years.
Hitting that target would mean renovating one and a half times faster than Spain managed between 2020 and 2025, though even this would not be enough to convert even half of Spain’s properties.
Report author Cristina Arias said Spain would need to renovate five times faster to reach a middling level of efficiency, and ten times faster to get close to the zero-emissions stock the EU wants by 2050.
Household energy use fell by about 11% between 2011 and 2024, according to the IDAE, the government’s energy agency, although it rose 1.7% in the final year.
Much of that was paid for by the EU’s Next Generation recovery funds, but the scheme for homes formally ended on June 30. So far, work on 203,297 homes in more than 4,600 municipalities has been certified.
The government and industry expect the final tally to land between 410,000 and 510,000 homes, but the official figure won’t come until early 2027.
That falls short of the government’s own ambitions. Its recovery plan aimed for 510,000 home renovations by mid-2026, on the way to 300,000 a year.
The report says renovations cut energy use in detached houses by 25% to 75%, and in flats by 10% to 50%.
On the Costa del Sol, homeowners are more likely than most to know where they stand. Malaga has the fourth-highest share of homes with a registered energy certificate in Spain, at 51.8%, behind Madrid, Navarra and Barcelona.
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It is not just Spanish homes that waste energy but Spanish Councils. I look across a rural valley where the street lights of the nearest Village and large town in the distance burn bright all night long. I can understand it in the larger cities and in coastal towns where crime where crime may be rife but I see no evidence of that in this rural area.