Abstract In order to achieve meaningful climate protection targets at the global scale, each country is called to set national energy policies aimed at reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions. By calculating the monthly heating energy demand of dwellings in the Netherlands, our case study country, we contrast the results with the corresponding aspired national targets. Considering different future population scenarios, renovation measures and temperature variations, we show that a near zero energy demand in 2050 could only be reached with very ambitious renovation measures. While the goal of reducing the energy demand of the building sector by 50% until 2030 compared to 1990 seems feasible for most provinces and months in the minimum scenario, it is impossible in our scenario with more pessimistic yet still realistic assumptions regarding future developments. Compared to the current value, the annual renovation rate per province would need to be at least doubled in order to reach the 2030 target independent of reasonable climatic and population changes in the future. Our findings also underline the importance of policy measures as the annual renovation rate is a key influencing factor regarding the reduction of the heating energy demand in dwellings.