Why we need sustainable buildings

Buildings are part of our everyday lives, but they also shape the fabric of our towns and cities. Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry (AEC) make up one of the biggest sectors worldwide, with a large impact on employment and GDP.

The global population just hit 8 billion. Population growth and increasing urbanization is adding to existing need for more and better urban infrastructure and buildings. At the same time, it’s unsurprising that the built environment accounts for roughly 35% of global energy demand, 38% of carbon emissions, and 40% of waste generation.

In the search for new solutions that address climate change, public and political attention has turned increasingly towards buildings. In particular, how sustainable buildings could help companies hit sustainability targets and governments hit their Paris climate targets – while boosting sustainable development worldwide.

The time for the construction sector to decarbonize is now.

This will involve an all-round rethink. It starts with more sustainable construction and careful use of resources.?Reducing and greening the energy required to keep buildings running is equally important.

Residential buildings have a particular impact: contributing to 17% of global carbon emissions, and 22% of global energy demand. When we consider past, current and future emissions in our equations, the role residential buildings must play in our transition to lower-carbon living becomes obvious.

Residential buildings are one of the single biggest decarbonization levers.

If we don’t get residential buildings right, we will fail to meet the 2030 climate targets.

Gereon Uerz , Head of Sustainability at GROPYUS ?

One of the most important tools to help us decarbonize buildings is digitalization and data. It is currently impossible to assess the complete carbon impact of 99% of all buildings due to a lack of data. We can only improve what we can understand and measure – without data, we are powerless to decarbonize the building industry. With whole-life-cycle-carbon assessments, we can collect, derive and analyze the data required to create the sustainable buildings we need for a greener future.

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At GROPYUS , it is our mission to make sustainable and affordable living possible for everyone using data and our whole-life-cycle carbon assessments. We look at buildings as products used by people, and apply innovative technologies throughout the entire value chain. Sustainability is embedded into our product development process from the start and all the way through, not an afterthought.

We created a pioneering, holistic, and science-based sustainability framework to guide and monitor our sustainability performance.

Read our next article to learn more about the specific sustainability ambitions and KPIs that GROPYUS uses to contribute to better building and to make sustainable living possible for everyone.

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