The built environment consumes large quantities of resources. In the European Union (EU), the construction and real estate sector is responsible for the consumption of around 50% of all materials and around 35% of all waste generated. Greenhouse gas emissions from the extraction of materials, the manufacture of construction products and the construction and renovation of buildings account for between 5-12% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated that up to 80% of these emissions could be saved with greater material efficiency3.
There is also enormous potential for improving the energy efficiency of the existing building stock. The management of buildings is responsible for 40% of annual energy consumption and 36% of annual greenhouse gas emissions in the EU energy sector.
3 Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs – Buildings and construction
Copyright
This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License as Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
For more information see: Creative Commons
