Finance Sustainable Buildings
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Our built environment needs to hammer down its climate commitment, rapidly so.
Amidst climate and energy crises in Europe, our built environment account for around 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions. A full decarbonisation of the EU building stock requires a complete toolkit of energy efficiency policies, but not without the often-forgotten sufficiency and circularity measures. Not sure what they look like? We at the European Environmental Bureau created this playbook of 22 innovative financial incentive instruments just for your inspiration.
Financial mechanisms to decarbonize the built environment are no doubt an essential part of the equation to reach our carbon neutrality objective by 2050 and achieve a 55% reduction target by 2030. That’s why an emphasis is placed on such instruments in EU legislative texts, notably the article 15.1 of the revised EPBD: ‘Member States shall provide appropriate financing, support measures and other instruments able to address market barriers and stimulate the necessary investments in energy renovations in line with their national building renovation plan and with a view to the transformation of their building stock into zero-emission buildings by 2050’.
Sufficiency policies
Sufficiency policies are a set of measures and daily practices that avoid the demand for energy, materials, land, water, and other natural resources over the lifecycle of buildings and goods while delivering wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries.
Circularity principles
Circularity principles avoid the linear use of materials and goods by applying some of the sufficiency principles at the product and construction materials levels. Circularity aims at reducing the extraction of virgin materials by reusing, repurposing, and recycling used materials and by extending the life time of products.
Fair, affordable, healthy, and sustainable housing for all.
The EU and its member states are at the formative phases in energy and building policies as buildings, their greenhouse gas emissions, and energy use is a pressing matter transcending security, social, and climate dimensions. Including the relevant sufficiency and circularity requirements, in the Energy Performance in Building Directive, the Construction Product Regulation, Ecodesign and the labelling directives as well as in the taxation directive, is a prerequisite to decarbonise EU buildings. Moreover, making the EU land take framework binding and including land take requirements at national level will lead local authorities to prioritise repurposing existing buildings over the construction of new buildings and multi-family dwellings over single-family homes. Thus, allowing for a better consideration of sufficiency and circularity.
