The upcoming renovations of large parts of the Swedish residential building stock have been seen as a window of opportunity to undertake energy efficiency measures, which would contribute to reaching ambitious savings objectives. In this paper the indications that building owners don´t have strong economic incentives to undertake such measures are investigated, and it is tested whether company attitudes and strategies differ with respect to level of ambition in energy efficiency matters. The aim of this paper is to get an insight into the renovation and energy efficiency state in Swedish housing companies, and to test hypotheses about how much energy efficiency work has been carried out and how potential obstacles and energy efficiency in terms of investment opportunities are perceived in order to give an indication of what energy efficiency investments can be expected to occur spontaneously in the existing Swedish building stock. The results indicate that renovations have started but will constitute a challenge to the companies, which may crowd out energy efficiency investments. They also indicate that the more ambitious companies do more extensive energy efficiency work and are more forward planning, but will not intervene “in excess”, in comparison with less ambitious companies. There are also indications that energy efficiency may be hindered by transaction costs, uncertainty about future energy prices, competing investments or financing, and that less ambitious companies place more emphasis on transaction costs, competing investments and financing problems than do more ambitious companies. There is no indication that the importance of economic considerations or that perceptions of uncertainty, risk or profitability differ with respect to ambition level, nor are there indications that the use of calculation methods or discount rate differs. It appears that it isn´t primarily economic or regulatory drivers that make the ambitious companies invest in energy efficiency; rather they seem to need other motives for energy efficiency investments in order to “create” profitability, whereas less ambitious companies seem to value short term profitability higher than ambitious companies do. Taken together only moderate energy efficiency investments are expected.