The World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) has launched a bold new policy plan for the European Union to accelerate progress on decarbonising buildings and construction, one of the most heavily emitting sectors in the world.

Developed with the support of a coalition of over 35 leading industry bodies through WorldGBC’s flagship #BuildingLife project, the EU Policy Roadmap is the first of its kind at EU scale to address the whole life carbon impact of the built environment, across multiple policy routes.

The roadmap proposes a timeline of recommended actions for EU policymakers to accelerate the decarbonisation of buildings by 2050, tackling both CO2 emissions from their operation, and the long-overlooked impact of emissions from materials and construction.

Much of Europe’s building stock is old and inefficient and the European Commission has acknowledged that renovation rates must at least double. The roadmap highlights the urgent need for more ambitious policy and financial support to enable energy efficient property upgrades.

Alongside this, buildings are still being constructed using carbon-intensive materials and processes, which sustains the high embodied carbon impact of the sector. That’s why the roadmap makes a series of recommendations on how EU policy can enforce the calculation and regulation of emissions across the whole life cycle of a building, as well as measures that will improve the circularity of building materials.

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