Construction is the second largest industrial ecosystem in the European Union in economic terms, employing around 25 million people. Planning the future of construction is not only about setting new actions and commitments, but also about aligning efforts and identifying and closing critical gaps. Many targets exist on how the built environment should transform in the future, but far fewer indicators exist on how the construction ecosystem should evolve to deliver on these objectives. 

This transition pathway describes the conditions and the necessary actions to achieve a resilient, competitive, greener, and more digital construction ecosystem. In addition, it proposes actions that support the transition towards safer buildings and affordable housing for all Europeans.

In the report's Annex II. National and Industry Commitments, the GlobalABC Global Roadmap for Buildings and Construction was mentioned:

The Global Roadmap for Buildings and Construction   sets out targets and timelines towards achieving zero-emission, efficient and resilient buildings, and construction between 2020 and 2050. The roadmap covers 8 themes, including urban planning, new buildings, existing buildings, building operations, appliances and systems, materials, resilience, and clean energy. For each of these themes, priority actions related to policy and technology are identified. This roadmap was developed in collaboration with the GlobalABC and UN Environment Programme.

A new paper, ‘Ahead of the Wave’, released by World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) on 2 March 2023, calls on the European financial and real estate sectors to take action as key players in the transformation wave to a sustainable built environment.

The finance sector is well-positioned to boost the transition to a sustainable built environment and take advantage of its leverage. Financial actors’ investment, lending, and insurance underwriting decisions shape tomorrow’s real economy. Investment decisions taken today will have repercussions for the built environment in years to come, so sustainability needs to be firmly at the top of the agenda.

Download the paper here.

A new report commissioned by IIGCC highlights how investors are considering buildings emissions using a ‘whole life carbon’ approach, drawing on research and case studies from experts and industry leaders.

In a world where embodied carbon is invisible, investors can make investment and sustainability decisions that may be unwittingly harming the environment. This is why leading members of IIGCC’s Real Estate Working Group are moving on the topic: “wait and see” is no longer an option. This report documents IIGCC’s series of roundtables hosted in 2022, providing “best practices” and examples from the series, where experts and leading investors explained how they are incorporating embodied carbon into their measurements and target setting.

Download the report here.

The technology and financing solutions needed to decarbonize the global building stock are available today. However, to truly realize a sustainable transformation, equity needs to be at the heart of the transition toward net-zero-carbon buildings, whether through addressing fuel poverty, investing in marginalized communities, upgrading infrastructure, or reducing costs to support greater clean energy access for marginalized communities. Now is the time for policies and programs to push forward an agenda that enables the decarbonization transition toward an equitable built environment.

Read the publication now

The CARE (Carbon Avoided: Retrofit Estimator) Tool is used for estimating and comparing the embodied, operating, and avoided carbon impacts and benefits of reusing and upgrading existing buildings or replacing them with new construction. The CARE Tool allows users to compare the total carbon impacts of renovating an existing building vs. replacing it with a new one.

The CARE Tool is an Architecture 2030 Project. 

This report provides data to support using low-carbon and carbon-storing materials in deep energy retrofits to reduce net emissions and transform buildings into climate assets. The study focuses on retrofit strategies for cold and mixed-humid climates and analyzes how reducing embodied carbon upfront impacts long-term operating emissions reductions through two examples of affordable multifamily housing deep energy retrofit projects in the Northeast. The report also includes case studies of successful completed retrofit projects and a list of available building products that use carbon-storing materials such as straw, bamboo and hemp for design teams and manufacturers.

Learn more and download the report here

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 on Climate Mitigation provides an updated global assessment of climate change mitigation progress and pledges, and examines the sources of global emissions. It explains developments in emission reduction and mitigation efforts, assessing the impact of national climate pledges in relation to long-term emissions goals.

Download the chapter on Buildings here.

In May 2022, to better understand how to measure and identify energy poverty and evaluate the adequate policies, IEECP established for the European Climate Foundation a study divided into 3 workstreams. The 3 studies provide deep insights into the 10 countries with the highest energy poverty levels in the EU (Bulgaria, Czechia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain) as well as Europe as a whole.

In December 2022, IEECP released the update of this work, focusing on 7 countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia). The updated study outlines how the changes in energy prices deriving from the market distortions in 2022 will influence the impact and implementation of three EU policies in the long term.

Download it here.

This report provides insight into strategies and measures companies can deploy to halve embodied carbon emissions, those associated with building materials and construction processes, by 2030. It analyzes how to use and adapt currently available technology, materials and products to reduce emissions as much as possible.

The first part of the report explores early-stage, whole-building decisions and the major impact these can have on the carbon outcome of a particular building project. The second part looks in more detail at the specific choices and measures companies might apply within the individual building layers to maximize embodied carbon reductions.

The report authors call on companies throughout the built environment to implement systemic changes to achieve the shared goal of at least halving carbon emissions by 2030. We need this systemic change now, as we are already planning the infrastructure that will be built in 2030. For the built environment, 2030 is today.

Download it here

This study shows that improving the insulation of all existing residential buildings in the EU would significantly contribute to securing the bloc’s energy independence, and achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Full renovation of EU residential buildings would result in a 44% reduction of energy demand for heating in buildings, or 777 TWh savings.

Read the full report here.