20 World Green Building Council: EU Policy Whole Life Carbon Roadmap Country SPAIN Targets* Reduce GHG emissions by 23% by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality and circular economy by 2050. 48 Policy initiatives • Climate law approved • Plans for electricity system to be 74% renewable by 2030 and to ban all new coal, oil and gas extraction projects • LTRS2020 to reduce the final energy consumption of the residential sector by 37.3% by 2050 with respect to 2020 • Climate-change law: Reduction of Materials Carbon footprint in discussion SWEDEN Carbon neutrality by 2045. 49 • Climate law (Klimatlagen 2017:720) • Climate declaration for new buildings 2022 modules A1- A5 50 • Climate declaration full life cycle before 2027 • Limit values for climate emissions from new buildings before 2027 • Climate declaration from refurbishment under investigation UNITED KINGDOM Reduce GHG emissions by 78% by 2035. 51 • Net zero WLC Roadmap from the UKGBC • Mandatory Greater London Authority requirement for new projects • Industrial decarbonisation strategy • Strategies to reduce demand for energy include improving resource and energy efficiency and ‘greener’ societal choices * Targets have 1990 baseline unless stated otherwise. Subnational leadership Subnational governments must lead the way when it comes to tackling the WLC impact of their buildings, not least because urban areas are responsible for 71–76% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. 52 Municipal governments can do so in various ways, such as public procurement, as well as overarching net zero targets that include the built environment through ambitious renovation and green building targets. Below are some examples of cities that have started to act. In 2018, Paris implemented the embodied carbon requirements of the French national buildings standard before the rest of the country. 53 Since then, new buildings have had to be assessed across the whole life cycle of the building: from material choices to end of life. Since 2020, Helsinki has included circular economy requirements in its demolition contracts. The Finnish capital requires that a minimum of 70% of waste generated on site is recycled or reused, and that materials including metal, glass, wood, concrete and brick must be source-separated and recycled. The city also aims to integrate LCA into construction procurement for building and infrastructure projects by 2025. 54 As a signatory of the C40 Clean Construction Declaration in 2020, Budapest aims to reduce embodied carbon emissions by at least 50% for all new buildings, infrastructure projects and major renovations by 2030 and is striving for at least 30% by 2025. It also aims for all construction sites across the city to be zero emission by 2030. 55 48 European Parliament briefing (2021), Climate action in Spain. 49 Ministry of the Environment and Energy (2017), Swedish climate policy framework. 50 Boverket (2021), Climate declaration for new buildings. 51 Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (2021), UK enshrines new target in law. 52 IPCC (2017, p. 25), Summary for Policymakers. 53 See The Paris Climate Agency. 54 Urban Environment Publications (n.d.), Helsinki’s Roadmap for Circular and Sharing Economy. 55 C40 (n.d.), Clean Construction Declaration.
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