European Commission's Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe - what's in it for buildings?
Resource efficiency is one of the flagship initiatives wit
hin the Europe 2020 Strategy meant to support the shift toward a sustainable and green economy in EU Member States. Europe is highly dependent on resources that are not available locally, which can be a source of conflicts in the future and economic instability. Therefore the EU’s approach is to come with a framework of proposed measure to address resources efficiency mainly from two major perspectives: how to better produce stuff with the resources that we have and how to better recycle and recover waste.
Last September, the European Commission released their Roadmap for a Resource Efficient Europe, a document meant to create a general framework on what can be done at the EU and Member State level in order to use the resources in a more efficient way. The framework identifies as main sectors that have the highest impact on the use of resources and where clear action plans should be developed to be food and drink, housing and mobility.
The Roadmap is just a strategy with no direct legal implications, but the suggestions included in it will be the base for future policy changes that will be applicable in the end at the national level as well. The Roadmap comes with proposed changes that will impact mostly the waste management legislation, the legal framework on production (eco-design mostly), research and innovation, taxation and incentives.
On the building sector the European Commission proposed the following milestones to be reached by 2020:
- The renovation and construction of buildings and infrastructure will made to high resource efficiency levels
- The Life-cycle approach will be widely applied
- All new buildings will be nearly zero-energy and highly material efficient
- Policies for renovating the existing building stock will be in place so that it is cost-efficiently to be refurbished at a rate of 2% per year
- 70% of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste will be recycled
The Council and European Parliament should endorse the Roadmap and contribute to its further development.