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Buildings

EU

“The building sector is crucial for achieving the EU’s energy and environmental goals. At the same time, better and more energy efficient buildings improve the quality of citizens’ life while bringing additional benefits to the economy and the society.

To boost energy performance of buildings, the EU has established a legislative framework that includes the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive2010/31/EU (EPBD) and the Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/EU.”

“Refurbished and sustainable buildings in the EU will help pave the way for a decarbonised and clean energy system, since buildings are one of the largest sources of energy consumption in Europe, responsible for over a third of EU emissions. But only 1% of buildings undergo energy-efficient renovation every year, so effective action is crucial to making Europe climate-neutral (net zero emissions) by 2050.

Currently, roughly 75% of buildings in the EU are not energy efficient, yet 85-95% of today’s buildings will still be in use in 2050.

Renovating both public and private buildings is an essential action, and has been singled out in the European Green Deal as a key initiative to drive energy efficiency in the sector and deliver on objectives.”

The focus “is to present a set of principles for the sustainable design of buildings with the aim to generate less construction and demolition waste as well as facilitate the reuse and recycling of construction materials, products and building elements, and help reduce the environmental impacts and life cycle costs of the building.”

One target audience for the document are Government/ Regulators/ Local authorities.

Institutions & companies (EU, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, ARUP, Circle Economy etc.)

This handbook can be a useful tool to lay the foundations for an overall strategy that looks at a new model of urban re-use management following the principles of the circular economy.

Moving towards a circular built environment involves a shift in roles and business models for stakeholders active in this sector. However, barriers related to culture, regulations, market, technology and education are slowing down the transition. 

Content: What is the circular built environment and how the circular economy can help us meet crucial sustainability challenges? What change is needed to transition from linear to circular business models? What is holding us back and what can stakeholders do? How can the private and public sectors create a level playing field and drive the scaling of the circular built environment? 

With this report, Circle Economy wanted to highlight the possibilities in the built environment sector – with all positive economic, social and environmental consequences that a circular building and planning process entails.

Papers, books

A comprehensive, quantitative analysis of the literature of the CE in buildings.

“This qualitative case study uses a practice theory approach to investigate how firms in the building industry in Luxembourg and Gothenburg, Sweden, understand CE and develop circular practices. The main findings indicate that the industry is in the early stages of developing CE practices. Most companies are in an orientation process and define the meaning and content of the Circular Economy.”

“This paper uses systemic thinking to map and evaluate different impact assessment methodologies and their implications for a shift to more circular solutions. The following systemic levels are used to group the methodologies: product (material life cycle declarations and building assessments), organisation (certification and management schemes) and system (policies, standards and regulations). The results confirm that circular economy is integrated at all levels. However, development and structure are not coordinated or governed unidirectionally, but rather occur simultaneously at different levels.”

New initiative

“Our built environment is responsible for 40% of global carbon emissions. Incremental steps are not enough: we need transformative solutions.

Built by Nature is a network and grant-making fund dedicated to accelerating the timber building transformation in Europe: radically reducing embodied carbon; safely storing carbon in our buildings for generations; and sequestering carbon by championing forest stewardship and regeneration.”

Policy briefs

Projects

Interreg Europe

  • BUILD2LC _ Boosting low carbon innovative building rehabilitation in European regions (Interreg Europe: Apr 2016 – Mar 2021)

There is a great potential for energy savings in public buildings. The “project will contribute decisively to achieve the EU energy goals, with its overall objective to increase the energy rehabilitation of buildings, and pave the path that facilitates the transit towards the new standard of nZEB buildings.”

The project results can be found under the following headings _ new financial instruments, professionalisation of the construction sector, new energy culture, citizen participation and energy poverty, Innovation and how to promote innovative solutions through the use of new materials, promoting public procurement and cooperation between companies and knowledge institutes. 

  • CLEAN _ Technologies and open innovation for low-carbon regions (Interreg Europe: Jan 2017 – Dec 2021)

“CLEAN will address the challenge of how best to meet EU energy efficiency targets for buildings in Europe’s regions.”

  • EMPOWER _ More carbon reduction by dynamically monitoring energy efficiency (Interreg Europe: Jan 2017 – Dec 2021)

“EMPOWER works on the exchange of good practices on dynamically monitoring energy efficiency in buildings, with special focus on the use of innovative financial instruments, in order to achieve more carbon reduction and to improve low-carbon economy policies.”

  • ENERSELVES _ Policy instruments for energy self-consumption in buildings (Interreg Europe: Jan 2017 – Dec 2021)

The main goal is to “Promote new policies or improve existing policies to support the integration of renewable energy into buildings for self-consumption financed by the Structural Funds and other EC instruments.”

  • FINERPOL _ Financial Instruments for Energy Renovation Policies (Interreg Europe: Apr 2016 – Sep 2020)

“Financial Instrument schemes with EU participation are created to provide finance on a complementary basis from the Union budget to address policy objectives of the Union. These objectives are often achieved with risky investments that require public participation to de-risk financing.

This EU financial support will be combined with finance coming from the private sector and other public financial sources in order to promote investments in the area of building energy retrofitting.”

  • LOCARBO _ Novel roles of regional and LOcal authorities in supporting energy consumers’ behaviour change towards a low CARBOn economy (Interreg Europe: Apr 2016 – Mar 2021)

The project “It aims to improve policy instruments targeting demand-driven initiatives to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewables in buildings, through innovative ways of supporting energy consumers’ behaviour change.”

  • REDUCES _ REthinking Sustainable Development in European Regions by Using Circular Economy Business ModelS (Interreg Europe: Aug 2019 – Jul 2023)

The REDUCES project to identify the best business models in six European regions and to research and critically assess their climate impacts and sustainability. The Valencian project partners have committed to improving the standard that regulates design and quality requirements in residential buildings (DC-09).

  • REBUS _ Renovation for Energy efficient BUildingS (Interreg Europe: Apr 2016 – Mar 2021)

“The overall objective of the REBUS project is to improve the capacity of public authorities in European regions, to undertake efficient renovation works of their public building stock, thus saving energy and public resources.”

  • ZEROCO2 _ Promotion of near zero CO2 emission buildings due to energy use (Interreg Europe: Apr 2016 – Mar 2020; Oct 2021 – Sep 2022)

“ZEROCO2 will define Near Zero CO2 Emission Buildings due to energy use (NZCO2EB). The project will present the various benefits, which result from this type of building.  It will demonstrate the combination of different technologies and energy efficiency sources. These can be used in order to achieve the set target to design state of the art policies, which will aim at promoting NZCO2EB at the local, regional and national level. ZEROCO2 will also present various financial methodologies in order to promote these types of buildings.”

Other Interreg programmes

  • CHARM _ Circular Housing Asset Renovation & Management (Interreg North-West Europe project: 2018 – 2022)

“The main project objective of CHARM is to optimise (re)use of material and natural resources. Other objective is to demonstrate innovative approaches for housing renovation and asset management that prevent downcycling.” 

  • H4.0E _ Housing 4.0 Energy (Interreg North-West Europe project: 2018 – 2021)

„The project aims to develop a market for small, affordable near-zero energy homes (NZEHs) by adapting and applying new digital technologies, thus stimulating both consumer and supplier interest. H4.0E will facilitate the uptake of low carbon and digital technologies, products, processes and services in the NWE housing sector to reduce carbon emissions and improve quality of life for homeowners and affordability for residents in the region and beyond.”

  • TOGETHER (Interreg Central Europe: 2016 – 2019)

Project “goal was to encourage Public Administrations to improve Energy Efficiency in their buildings also by involving users in energy management. TOGETHER aimed at changing the existing atomistic vision into a holistic vision of the buildings as a whole of functions and relationships between physical space, technological devices and users’ needs-behaviour.”

URBACT

  • URGE _ circUlaR buildinG citiEs (URBACT network: 2019 – ongoing)

URGE network of cities attempts a first dive into the issue of circularity in the building sector, aiming to impact importantly local policies and contribute to the achievement of the ambitious European goals and objectives. The cities are: large cities: Copenhagen, Munich; medium sized cities: Utrecht, Riga; smaller cities: Maribor, Kavala, Oeste.

HORIZON

  • Projects on building renovation
    • BUILD UP initiative _ a portal for sharing knowledge on how to make buildings more energy-efficient;
    • BUILD UP Skills initiative _ which aims to increase the number of qualified building professionals across Europe who can carry out building renovations that offer high energy performance as well as construct new near zero-energy buildings;
    • 4RinEU project _ which aims to provide new tools and strategies to encourage large-scale renovation of existing buildings and promoting the use of renewable energies.

HORIZON 2020

Aim of the project “is to build an interdisciplinary platform for connecting city planners, architects, system designers, circular economists, engineers and researchers from social and natural sciences that develop systems for circular management of resources in cities.”

Circular City is focusing on the following topics: Built environment; Sustainable urban water utilization; Resource recovery; Urban farming; Transformation tools.

Built Environment: “The built environment puts the most pressure on the natural environment and its role in transforming to a CE system is pivotal (Pomponi and Moncaster, 2017). Within this working group the NBS-CE aspect for buildings and at the settlement level is investigated with the main focus on vegetated building materials and resources to be obtained from the corresponding NBS.

OBJECTIVES

Define available resource streams connected to NBS within the built environment. Create case studies capturing and monitoring the resource loops and investigate possible available resources provided by relevant NBS proposed by other WGs.”

  • BAMB _ Buildings as material banks _ Integrating Materials Passports with Reversible Building Design to Optimise Circular Industrial Value Chains (Sep 2015 – Feb 2019)

“BAMB has developed know-how and tools to help the construction sector embrace the circular economy and increase the reuse, reconfiguration and recycling of products, materials and components of buildings. The BAMB project advanced two key concepts: materials passports and reversible building design tools.”

  • CINDERELA _ New Circular Economy Business Model for More Sustainable Urban Construction (Jun 2018 – May 2022)

“The CINDERELA project aims to untap this potential by developing and demonstrating a new business model (CinderCEBM) to assist companies in setting up successful circular economy business cases based on waste-to-resource opportunities. The business model will be accompanied by a “one-stop-shop” (CinderOSS) service offering all that companies need to know for manufacturing and application of SRM-based construction materials in buildings and civil engineering works.”

  • CIRCUIT _ Circular Construction In Regenerative Cities (Jun 2019 – Nov 2023)

“The project aims to present the whole system of elements engaged in the transition process: from dismantling buildings for reuse of materials to Circularity Hubs and CIRCuIT Academy, promoting the development of further solutions. In 36 demonstration projects, CIRCuIT will present the tools of today and the future that will boost regeneration while substantially reducing the use of virgin raw materials.”

  • CityLoops _ Boosting the circularity of organic and construction and demolition waste (Oct 2019 – Sep 2023)

“The CityLoops project brings together seven European cities – Apeldoorn, Bodø, Mikkeli, Porto, Seville, Høje-Taastrup and Roskilde – to pilot a series of demonstration actions to close the loop of two of the most important waste streams in Europe: Construction and Demolition Waste, and Biowaste. Their ultimate aim is to become circular cities in which no resource goes to waste, driving the transition to the circular economy.”

  • HOUSEFUL _ Innovative circular solutions and services for the housing sector (May 2018 – Oct 2022)

“HOUSEFUL proposes an innovative paradigm shift towards a circular economy for the housing sector. The project will pursue its objectives by designing innovative interventions for efficient management of materials, waste, water and energy along the entire housing value chain. This will be done by demonstrating the feasibility of an integrated systemic service composed of 11 circular solutions, which will be demonstrated in four different buildings located in Vienna and nearby Barcelona.”

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