European Commission Directorate-General Environment Topical Paper 1: Resource-efficiency in the built environment - a broad-brushed, top-down assessment of priorities Date February 2013 Author(s) Arjan de Koning (CML), Nina Eisenmenger (AAU-SEC), Ester van der Voet (CML) Number of appendices 5 Study name ENV.F.1/ETU/2011/0044 "Assessment of Scenarios and Options towards a Resource Efficient Europe” Disclaimer: The information contained in this report does not necessarily represent the position or opinion of the European Commission. Resource-efficiency in the built environment - a broad-brushed, top-down assessment of priorities 2 / 40 ENV/F.1/ETU/2011/0044 Contents 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 6 2 Methodology and data ................................................................................................. 8 2.1 Input-output analysis .................................................................................................... 8 2.2 Material Flow Accounting ............................................................................................. 9 2.3 Indicators .................................................................................................................... 9 2.4 Investigating driving forces ........................................................................................... 9 2.5 Databases .................................................................................................................. 10 3 Driving forces and trends ........................................................................................... 11 3.1 Population growth...................................................................................................... 11 3.2 Economic growth and capital formation ....................................................................... 12 3.3 Gross fixed capital formation dwellings ........................................................................ 13 3.4 Floor space ................................................................................................................ 15 3.5 Use phase variables .................................................................................................... 17 3.6 Trends in driving forces ............................................................................................... 19 4 Results ...................................................................................................................... 20 4.1 Resource use ............................................................................................................. 20 4.1.1 EIOA .......................................................................................................................... 20 4.1.2 MFA .......................................................................................................................... 22 4.1.3 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 26 4.2 Emissions ................................................................................................................... 26 4.3 Energy flows .............................................................................................................. 28 4.3.1 Energy consumption in the EU27 ................................................................................. 28 4.3.2 Energy use for space heating and cooling by households ............................................... 29 4.4 Use of other resources: land and water ........................................................................ 31 4.4.1 Land use .................................................................................................................... 31 4.4.2 Water use .................................................................................................................. 32 4.5 Resource efficiency .................................................................................................... 32 4.6 Share of built environment in total resource use and emissions in EU27 ......................... 34 4.7 Contribution analysis .................................................................................................. 36 5 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 38 5.1 Resource use and emissions ........................................................................................ 38 5.2 Input for scenario modelling ....................................................................................... 38 6 References ................................................................................................................ 39 Resource-efficiency in the built environment - a broad-brushed, top-down assessment of priorities 3 / 40 ENV/F.1/ETU/2011/0044 Backgrounds of the project: Assessment of Scenarios and Options towards a Resource Efficient Europe The Europe 2020 Strategy, endorsed by the European Council in June 2010, establishes resource efficiency as one of its fundamental flagship initiatives for ensuring the smart, sustainable and inclusive growth of Europe. In support of the Flagship, the Commission has placed a contract with TNO, CML, PE and AAU/SEC for a project with the following aims. It should identify inefficient use of resources across different sectors and policy area’s at meso- and macro level and then quantitatively assesses potentials and socio-economic and environmental effects of efficiency improvements, both from singular as system wide changes, up to 2050. The Built environment is the focus area. The core methodology is a hybrid modelling approach: identifying improvement options, their costs and improvement potential at micro/meso level, and to feed them into a macro-model (EXIOMOD) to assess economy-wide impacts of improvement scenarios. Stakeholder engagement via workshops is an important part of the study. The study started in January 2012 and will end in December 2013. To inform stakeholders, during the project some 8-10 ‘Topical papers’ will be written. The aim is to get feedback on crucial elements of the scenario modelling with stakeholders. This document is the first of the topical papers. Resource-efficiency in the built environment - a broad-brushed, top-down assessment of priorities 4 / 40 ENV/F.1/ETU/2011/0044 Summary In this top-down analysis of the environmental emissions and natural resource efficiency in the residential built environment two tools have been used: economy-wide Material Flow Accounting (MFA) and environmentally extended input output analysis (EE-IOA). MFA provides a territorial (per country) and temporal overview of the production, imports, exports of natural resources and energy in a country. EE-IOA gives information on the ‘cradle-to-grave’ use of natural resources and environmental emissions associated with the consumption of construction work in a particular country. In addition, an investigation has been made of driving forces: societal indicators for the size and resource intensity of the construction sector. The residential construction sector is a material intensive sector: it contributes 9% to GDP on average in the EU, but much more to resource use. On average, 50% of bulk construction materials like sand, gravel, clay and stone ends up in residential construction work – the other half largely going into other construction work. About 10 – 20% of metals such as iron, aluminium, copper etc. are incorporated in built residential infrastructure. The bulk construction materials are mainly quarried in the country where they are used. For metals the EU depends almost exclusively on imports from foreign countries except for lead and zinc ores where about 40% is mined within the EU. The construction sector appears to have a substantial contribution to the ‘cradle-to-grave’ emissions at the national level. The emissions are more or less in line with the contribution to GDP (7 - 15% of EU total). The construction sector can thus be characterized as having an average emission intensity, but because it is a large sector it is a relevant one. Important sources of emissions in the cradle-to-gate construction chain are the power plants needed to provide electricity to the construction sector, cement and baked clay products plants, and blast furnace works. The emissions from the construction site itself are important as well, especially for Non-Methane Volatile Organic Chemicals (NMVOC) emissions. Because most of the environmental emissions take place in the supply-chain to the construction work sector, the structure of the supply chain may have a strong influence on the environmental emissions associated with the construction work sector. Including the use phase makes a difference: residential emissions including the use phase are considerably higher (10 – 35% of EU total), mainly due to residential energy use for space heating and cooling. There are significant deviations in the amount of construction minerals used across countries. For example, we see a high wood use in Northern countries, while the slate use in Ireland is particularly high. Patterns like these are interesting to explore further. A decisive influence of climate on emissions of the construction sector cannot be detected. Driving forces for construction activity are population and GDP. More specifically the gross fixed capital formation in dwellings is