Decarbonisation of Buildings: for Climate, Health and Jobs

Europeans spend a very large part of their lives in buildings. So the quality of a building’s indoor environment can have a large effect on the health of its occupants. It can also affect their ability to work and enjoy their activities. A potentially good indoor environment can be created by building designers and builders, but that environment cannot be realised without using energy to provide heating, cooling and ventilation. Much of that energy today is supplied using fossil fuels, which cause buildings to produce about 25% of the European Union’s (EU’s) total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and so contribute to climate change.

Action must therefore be taken urgently to reduce the energy that is needed to operate the approximately 250 million existing buildings in the EU as well as all the new buildings that may be built in the future. Existing energy supplies must also be replaced with very low carbon alternatives.