There is considerable scope for energy efficiency improvements to the housing stock in the Netherlands. Although, economically, there are many technological opportunities available, the Dutch built environment has difficulty to harvest this potential. This paper applies a sectoral innovation system approach to investigate this apparent paradox. This approach allows to identify and assess systemic barriers that prevent improvement in overall energy efficiency of the Dutch housing sector. Twenty-one experts were interviewed, and a qualitative data analysis was applied to identify barriers, and relate them to key dimensions in the sectoral innovation system framework. From this analysis, we identified poor regulatory design, lack of market demand, and some institutional characteristics of the construction sector as the key systemic barriers that hamper the diffusion of green energy innovations in the Dutch housing sector. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.