27 Resource efficiency in the building
sector
| Committee's assessment
| Politically important |
| Committee's decision | Cleared from scrutiny
|
| Document details | Resource efficiency opportunities in the building sector (36205), 11609/14, COM(14) 445
|
| Legal base | —
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| Department | Business, Innovation and Skills
|
Summary and Committee's conclusions
27.1 According to the Commission, the construction
and use of buildings in the EU generates a significant proportion
of all waste, and gives rise to environmental pressures at different
stages in the life-cycle. It has therefore put forward this Communication
in order to promote a more efficient use of resources within the
sector, and in particular to inform decision making by those involved
by providing useable and reliable information.
27.2 The Communication suggests that action should
be taken under three main headings: reducing resource use through
action at both the design and construction stages; establishing
a common European approach to the assessment of environmental
performance through a framework on core indicators; and achieving
a better functioning market for recycled construction materials
by means which include investigating how systemic barriers can
be overcome. The Government says that it is already taking steps
to improve performance in the building and construction sector,
and is not yet clear how a common EU approach would add value.
Also, although it would welcome information being provided in
a more standardised format, it would not support imposing indicators
on business, and it has pointed out that there could be some inconsistencies
between the steps envisaged in this document and certain of the
changes which the Commission is simultaneously proposing to various
pieces of EU waste legislation.
27.3 This document is one of a package of measures
put forward by the Commission recently addressing the issues of
resource efficiency and waste. Some of these — notably a
Communication on a zero waste programme, and a draft Directive
amending a number of EU legal instruments — are significant,
but, although the document raises some issues which we think it
right to draw to the attention of the House, we see no need to
hold it under scrutiny.
Full details of the document:
Commission Communication: Resource efficiency opportunities
in the building sector: (36205), 11609/14, COM(14)
445.
Background
27.4 According to the Commission, the construction
and use of buildings in the EU accounts for about half its consumption
of extracted materials and energy; generates about one-third of
all waste; and gives rise to environmental pressures at different
stages in the life-cycle. It has therefore put forward this Communication
— which has been produced as one of a package of measures
accompanying its Communication[124]
on a zero waste programme for Europe — in order to promote
a more efficient use of resources within the sector, and in particular
to inform decision-making by providing useable and reliable information
for those involved.
The current document
27.5 The Communication suggests that action should
be taken under three main headings:
· reducing resource use;
· establishing a common European approach
to the assessment of environmental performance; and
· achieving a better functioning market
for recycled construction materials.
Reducing resource use
27.6 The Commission says that this can be achieved
by better design and project planning, promoting more resource
efficient manufacturing of construction products (for example,
by using recycled materials), and promoting more resource-efficient
construction and renovation. In particular, it notes that recycling
or re-use is increasingly important, but that the overall balance
depends largely on the existence, as a cost-efficient alternative
to landfill, of efficient recycling systems which minimise the
distances waste is transported. It notes that energy consumption
from heating and lighting is covered by a range of EU regulations,
whilst energy used in the manufacture of construction products
and in the construction process itself not only accounts for 5-10%
of total energy consumption, but is also leading to an increasing
level of greenhouse gas emissions, and it stresses the need for
the whole life-cycle of a building to be considered if impacts
are not to be overlooked.
27.7 The Commission goes on to suggest that buildings
which are designed and constructed to reduce life-cycle environmental
impacts deliver direct economic benefits such as lower operational
and maintenance costs and slower depreciation, and that there
are also positive social impacts such as improved health and productivity.
It observes that, as awareness has increased, and the supply chain
has adapted to new requirements, costs have fallen, particularly
for the construction of sustainable residential buildings.
Common approach to assessing environmental performance
27.8 The Commission notes that the Roadmap to a Resource
Efficient Europe proposed that buildings should be renovated and
constructed with greater resource efficiency, requiring policies
looking at a wide range of environmental impacts across the entire
life-cycle, with the Strategy for Sustainable Competitiveness
of the Construction Sector identifying resource efficiency as
among the main challenges facing the sector up to 2020 and indicating
that the Commission would propose the harmonisation of various
existing assessment methods. It also notes that, although a number
of instruments have an impact on buildings and construction products,
they focus on different aspects, and do not provide an overall
life-cycle approach; that, with some Member States pursuing policies
linked to life-cycle information, there is a risk of differing
indicators being developed; and that, in the private sector, the
environmental performance of very few buildings is certified through
voluntary commercial schemes. It accordingly concludes that there
is a lack of reliable, comparable and affordable data, methods
and tools for benchmarking environmental performance, making it
difficult to take investment decisions, and leading to inadequate
guidance for consumers.
27.9 The Commission therefore proposes that there
should be a common framework of core indicators which focus on
the most essential impacts. It suggests that this would allow
easier communication of information, provide reliable and comparable
data for decisions covering the entire life-cycle of buildings,
enable clear objectives and targets to be set for building performance,
increase awareness of the benefits of sustainable buildings within
the industry and among customers, facilitate the transfer of good
practice from one state to another, reduce the cost of assessing
and communicating the environmental performance of buildings,
provide public authorities with relevant data on which to base
policy initiatives, and widen the market for sustainable buildings
to more countries and to other sectors, such as non-residential
buildings. It also suggests that there would be advantages for
those associated with the building sector, including architects
and designers, manufacturers of construction products, developers
and investors, property owners and insurers.
27.10 The Commission goes on to suggest that consideration
should as a minimum be given to indicators such as total energy
use (including operational energy, and embodied energy of products
and construction processes); material use and embodied environmental
impacts, durability of construction products, design for deconstruction,
management of construction and demolition waste, recycled content
in construction materials, recyclability and re-usability of construction
materials and products, water used by buildings, the use intensity
of (mostly public) buildings, and indoor comfort. However, it
points out that, in view of the wide range of buildings in the
EU and construction differences, the framework will not cover
all aspects of environmental performance, but rather comprise
the indicators identified as having the highest environmental
impact.
27.11 The Commission adds that the framework will
also provide guidance on its implementation, particularly as regards
quality and reliability and third party verification, include
guidance on the use of indicators, suggest relevant benchmarks
of building performance beyond energy efficiency, and allow for
the translation of technical indicators into information useful
for financers. It also says that the framework, which will need
to be both flexible and rigorous, will have to be agreed with
Member States and stakeholders, and that the intention is to make
it free to use in decision-making at different stages, as well
as in policy making.
Improved market for recycled construction products
27.12 The Commission says that special attention
will be given to increasing the use of recycled materials and
the reduction of construction and demolition waste (where, despite
most being recyclable, and the significant resource and environmental
benefits, average recovery in the EU is less than 50%, and large
amounts are still landfilled or backfilled). It also points to
the impact of the failure to internalise the cost of environmental
damage in landfill fees or the cost of virgin materials, and the
fact that, whilst the costs of processing waste are mostly borne
at the demolition phase, the potential benefits from recycled
materials generally accrue during production, thus discouraging
investment in deconstruction and separation operations. The Commission
says that it will investigate how these systemic barriers can
be overcome.
The Government's view
27.13 In his Explanatory Memorandum of 22 July 2014,
the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Energy (Matthew Hancock)
says that achieving improved performance of buildings and the
construction process is central to the UK Government's approach
to the construction industry through its strategy Construction
2025, and that it is not yet clear how a common EU approach
would add value.
27.14 More specifically, he comments that, whilst
work to gather evidence and develop a better understanding of
the different indicators for sustainable buildings and their construction
across Europe is helpful, a framework of common criteria and consistent
standards is unlikely to help reduce the costs and burdens of
assessment, unless they are mirrored in existing schemes. Consequently,
the UK would only welcome an approach which is based on getting
better information in a more standardised format to the market,
so that decisions are properly informed and associated costs reduced.
Nor would it support imposing the use of these indicators on business
(the UK has an internationally recognised standard,[125]
and it will be for these and other standard owners to decide how
to respond to the Commission's work).
27.15 The Minister also points out that the Government
has embarked with industry on a four-year programme for sector
modernisation, with the key objective of reducing by 20% by 2025
the capital cost and carbon burden from the construction and operation
of the built environment. Central to these ambitions is the adoption
of information-rich 3D Building Information Modelling (BIM) technologies,
process and collaborative behaviours which will unlock new, more
efficient ways of working at all stages of the project life-cycle
and generate a verifiable data set about the building. He describes
BIM as a game-changing technology for the global construction
industry, which has been mandated on all government "new
build" projects from 2016, and he says that the data it provides
will considerably assist in the environmental assessment of buildings,
as well as interfacing with existing systems (such as BREEAM)
to ease the burden on business. However, he points out that the
necessary standards and protocols are not yet in place to allow
this to be done consistently, and that, in addressing this, the
Government would want to give greater European prominence to the
benefits of BIM in relation to environmental standards and frameworks.
He also says that, although Building Regulations currently contain
requirements relating to sustainability — principally in
relation to energy and water efficiency — the UK welcomes
the fact that the Communication does not suggest that Member States
should be required to regulate further as the primary means of
achieving more sustainable buildings.
27.16 Finally, the Minister notes that the Commission
will do further work to promote the exchange of best practice
on the diversion of construction and demolition waste from landfill
and the substitution of virgin materials with secondary materials
through charges or regulation, and that, as part of its package
of proposals sitting alongside its Commission Communication on
a zero waste programme, it has made a separate proposal, which
includes a review of the targets contained in the Waste Framework,
Landfill, and Packaging and Packaging Waste Directives, as well
as amendments aligning definitions, terms and powers. He suggests
that there appear to be some inconsistencies between these amendments
and the aspirations in this Communication to increase re-use and
recycling of waste-derived products or materials in construction.
For example, a new definition of backfilling, which would now
include the recycling and re-use of "waste used in construction"
where this is substituting virgin materials, has the potential
to effectively demote all the use of waste-derived products and
materials in construction to a recovery operation, lower down
the waste management hierarchy, and could reduce incentives
to use waste-derived products in construction. Consequently, these
changes of definition will need to be clarified before the proposals
are acceptable to the UK.
Previous Committee Reports
None.
124 (36203), 11592/14: see Chapter 2 of this Report. Back
125
BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment
Methodology). Back
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