Written by Laetitia Aumont, Policy Officer for Circular and Carbon Neutral Built Environment at the European Environmental Bureau.
Affordable housing is a top priority for the new Commission, as highlighted by Ursula von der Leyen in her Political Guidelines and with the introduction of the EU’s first energy and housing commissioner. This crucial step to tackle Europe’s housing crisis, however, could escalate demand for new buildings, further straining one of the continent’s most energy-intensive and wasteful sectors. European leaders and the built sectors now face a tough challenge: how can they provide more affordable homes without worsening the environmental impact of construction and renovation?
To this, a solution remains under-explored: sufficiency policies.
Fighting the Housing Crisis vs. the Climate Crisis
Buildings account for 40% of energy use and 50% of material use in the EU. From heating to every kilogram of cement and steel, buildings have significant impacts on the environment. These impacts exacerbate the climate crisis, which in turn worsen living conditions including housing quality due to excessive heat and cold. Addressing this, in recent years, many policy developments have tackled the energy and material use of the built sector, including the European Commission’s Renovation Wave, aiming to cut buildings’ greenhouse gas emissions by 60% before 2030, and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), mandating carbon-neutral buildings by 2050.
However, measures to decarbonise buildings, if not implemented correctly (i.e., with sufficient attention to social safeguards), also risk worsening the current housing crisis and the cost overburden borne by EU households. A study suggests that while modest eco-friendly renovations provide financial relief for tenants, larger-scale projects often shift the financial burden onto renters, and especially to low-income tenants. In 2021, one in ten city dwellers spent over 40% of their disposable income on housing.
Conversely, addressing the housing crisis only by building new homes without considering carbon budgets and climate objectives is untenable. For example, in Germany, the new construction targets proposed to meet urgent housing needs are 400,000 houses per year, while the carbon budget for the entire EU can only encompass 176,000 new houses without undermining our environmental efforts.
Yet, the need for housing and the need to decarbonise do not have to be at odds with one another. To this regard, sufficiency policies, including on how to use existing built environment and the estimated 38 million empty homes in Europe, can incentivise the repurposing of these existing spaces for the benefit of the community.
Thinking inside the existing boxes: The potential of sufficiency for a just and sustainable built environment
Sufficiency, as defined by the IPCC, refers to “a set of measures and daily practices that avoid demand for energy, materials, land, and water while delivering human well-being for all within planetary boundaries.” These policies therefore differ from other circular economy and efficiency approaches like reuse or alternative building materials, which focus on ‘building better.’ Sufficiency is about rethinking space use and questioning the need for new construction.
From 1990 to 2018, efficiency improvements and increased renewable energy use reduced CO2 emissions in the residential building use phase by 29%, lowering overall energy demand per square meter. However, new construction has increased living space per person and material demand, especially in wealthiest countries, reversing any climate achievements from efficiency. This ‘rebound effect’ shows that the EU cannot achieve a climate-neutral building stock without implementing sufficiency policies. Sufficiency, efficiency, and the uptake of renewables must work together to address social and environmental crises.
Sufficiency strategies in the built environment aim to address both social and environmental challenges by using existing building spaces, avoiding new constructions with the goal to meet the need for decent and fair housing for all while staying within planetary boundaries.
Several strategies can achieve this, such as optimising the use of buildings through co-working, co-living, and multi-purpose spaces, reducing vacancy rates, decreasing the number of secondary and tertiary residences, prioritising multi-family buildings over single-family homes, and ensuring built-in adaptable design that matches household needs while ensuring adequate space, privacy, functionality, and comfort.
Sufficiency at the heart of upcoming policies for the built environment
Despite its potential, sufficiency has been largely neglected in policymaking at EU level, and examples can only be found in a fragmented way at national and local level. For example, in France vacancy taxes have been successfully implemented and encourage owners to reintroduce empty dwellings to the housing market in areas where there is unmet demand. In Germany, almost all federal states have laws on the alienation of housing, and some municipalities go further with, for example, the introduction of a moving bonus in Frankfurt am Main, or housing protection numbers in Hamburg.
The CLEVER scenario estimates that, in countries such as France, Germany or the UK, sufficiency could reduce final energy consumption by 20-30% by 2050. And it is not all about energy: the impact related to the material consumption necessary for the construction and renovation of buildings remains large. Research suggests that growing interest in circular policies (e.g., reuse and recycling of materials) are not enough to achieve the needed reduction in resource use: sufficiency policies are needed!
The office of the upcoming Commissioner for Housing should include responsibilities for the entire built environment. This new portfolio must prioritise the integration of sufficiency policies, while also leading the EU’s efforts to improve access to housing and community infrastructure, promote the use of quality materials and circular economy practices, increase energy security in buildings, and support thriving and sustainable construction sector jobs and SMEs.
For more information on sufficiency in the built environment check out the European Environmental Bureau’s factsheet.
