Europe is more politically progressive (in some ways) than the USA, and sustainability is a progressive standpoint. Political identity politics in the USA means that even if you have a ranch in rural Texas and are directly observing the negative effects of fracking on your local environment, you still support the people that are trying to make more of that happen because if you don't, well, you must hate pickup trucks and beer and Christians too (drawing on personal experience as a Texan).

I've poked around on this topic here and there when bored and never found many good explanations for why this is the case. Probably a million weird little reasons, historical, economic, cultural. IMO the country is just too damn big to try to claim a single cultural identity, and it's resulted in absurd caricatures of polarized political identity, fostered as well by a two party system where it's basically impossible to be represented well per your values. In the USA you can't vote for someone that's promoting reducing government spending without also voting for someone that's attacking trans people's right to exist, or at least in the same party as such a person. Or someone that's trying to take away your wife's healthcare rights. Same way you can't vote for reducing oil dependence without also voting for, idk, taking everyone's guns away.

Much of the US has access to cheap natural gas. And a good amount of oil. The greater the cost of energy the more it drives innovation in energy usage as well as incentivizes projects that would have a longer pay back period where energy is cheaper. Although Norway has abundant energy but socialized the profits and is using them to advance their usage of renewables and electrification. In the US we privatize the gains and only socialize the losses.

Civil engineering in general is more advanced in Europe. The oil crisis in the 1970 and the subsequent use of thermal insulation made "Bauphysik" (building physics) an integral part of the planing process. In the US you just rely on more heating/cooling power instead.

Just as an example: >=16cm thermal insulation + heat pump or solar thermal energy + double or triple pane windows have been standard for new single family homes since at least 2005 in Austria.

It's also that the infrastructure of the US is very young. In Europe a 100 year old building is shockingly common. And they are still in use. Mostly because even back then (some) housing was already build in a lasting manner. And not being able/willing to tear them down gives you a baselevel of sustainability.

The other thing is that we used up most of "our" fossil energy reserves decades ago and what we want to burn today requires imports, which requires a reasonably stable world economy, a reasonably strong geopolitical position and ... well ... even the last conservative governments have woken up, that those assumptions may not be true any longer

It's mostly centered around cost. Fuel (of all types) is so cheap in the US that efficiency was not an ultra high priority for most people. Ironically, the US has now gotten extremely competent at drilling for natural gas and the price is going to stay pretty much fixed where it is for the next 50+ years. Most of the waste from the early days has also been reduced and funneled into new petrochemical production processes that used to be reliant on oil.

If you are going to stay in one place for a long time, renewable solutions to problems like hot water and residential electricity are worth the investment, but with the migratory nature of the US worker, it's often cheaper for a household to pay for fuel for 5~ years rather than invest in a renewable solution that they will never reap the monetary benefits from.

From what I've experienced since moving from the US to Europe in 2022, it's a lot more common for people to stay in the same houses for an extended period of time. Especially here where I live in the Netherlands, you can commute to work almost anywhere in the country in about 2 hours by car. This allows people to keep the family home.