Energy Performance of Buildings Directive: Whole Life Carbon policies are needed now

For EU and national climate action, buildings are the elephant in the room. Almost everything in our daily lives adds to their climate impact, yet the EU has almost no climate-focused building policies, and no overarching building decarbonisation policy to date.

Delays in policies to deliver lifecycle decarbonisation of buildings have exacerbated the challenge of reaching Europe’s climate targets. Whole life carbon (WLC) building policies as Paris-aligned incentives and requirements are long overdue. In this paper, the EEB and ECOS call on EU Member States to recognise the role of buildings in combatting climate change by agreeing to a common EU framework for Whole Life Carbon (WLC).