Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the buildings and construction sector is crucial to achieving the European Union’s goal of climate neutrality. Over a third of the EU’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings, and the large material flows associated with construction and demolition further add to their environmental impact. Meanwhile, the sector is marked by a low level of digitalisation and data availability. Improved access to quality building data for stakeholders in the sector is key to unlocking a resource-efficient and economically viable transition to a climate-neutral buildings and construction sector by 2050.

The potential of a common repository for building data – a Digital Building Logbook (DBL) – as a driver and enabler of improved resource efficiency in the sector has caught the interest of EU policymakers. But is the EU policy framework fit to support a broad uptake of DBLs in Member States, and to fully leverage their benefits?

This factsheet, produced as part of the Demo-BLog project, explains what a DBL is and how it can contribute to a wide range of societal goals, from climate and environment to public health, innovation and more. Second, it shows how DBLs have been integrated into EU policy, how they fit into the expanding array of building information tools, and what might be missing to realise their full potential.