The housing we need, for the future we want
[ Collaborators ]BPIE - Buildings Performance Institute Europe, VELUX, RISE Regenerative Spatial Systems, Artelia Denmark
A green paper and systems framework on how the building industry can answer four crises at once: climate and biodiversity breakdown, energy and resource insecurity, unaffordable housing, and unhealthy homes. For the first time, the paper treats them as one system. It asks a simple question. What happens when the same interventions are designed to fix all four together?
The findings went further than expected. By using Europe's existing buildings better, the industry could unlock 50 to 107 million additional homes, house up to 250 million more people, avoid up to 19 billion tonnes of CO₂, and prevent up to 13 billion tonnes of material use.
“The future is already here, and it´s beautiful”
The point is this. The building industry is not only part of the problem. It could become one of our strongest responses to it. The paper quantifies the pathway: a sector moving from cause to cure, creating homes, improving health, cutting energy and resource dependency, and lowering emissions through one coordinated set of actions.
A way forward for an industry ready to change its role.
Greenpaper - Sept. 2026[ Links ]