Building according to the 2050 goals

Research shows that in new buildings (low energy buildings) the materials are responsible for almost as much greenhouse gas as the use phase. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that allows the environmental impact of a building to be mapped over its entire life cycle. It not only considers the impact on climate change, but a whole range of environmental indicators are taken into account, such as particulate matter formation, resource depletion, biodiversity loss and toxicity, among others.

Since February 2019, a free online tool is available, TOTEM, which allows to calculate the life cycle impact of buildings and thus adjust the design. The tool provides insight into which elements contribute most to the impact, during which life cycle phases the greatest impact is caused and on which environmental indicators the design scores worst. This allows architects to make targeted design adjustments and make informed choices regarding building design, choice of materials and energy performance.

In order to reduce the material impact, architects can use various strategies. Three principles underlie these strategies:

• reduce material consumption,
• filling the remaining demand with materials with a low environmental impact and
• maximizing the life span of the materials.

In order to extend the life span, a great deal of attention has recently been paid to circular construction, in which people look for ways to reuse or recycle materials to a high standard at the end of the building's life. But equally, people are looking for building designs that allow for flexibility and adaptability in order to accommodate new needs or new programs. Buildings of the future will thus have a lower impact on the environment, and may even be built from raw materials that are already present in our buildings. Buildings will then become banks of materials.

This is the philosophy behind Holcim's ECOPact concrete: the CO2 balance of the concrete is reduced as much as possible by applying five strict requirements on production and delivery:

• The use of raw materials with a low ecological footprint;
• CO2-neutral or CSC (Concrete Sustainability Council) labeled production sites;
• Transportation of concrete with Euro 6 vehicles;
• An analysis of the carbon content, which is carried out and validated by an external organization at the end of each project;
• The share of incompressible CO2 emissions is offset by investing in certified sustainable local and international development projects in partnership with CO2logic and the Royal Belgian Forestry Commission.

For example, the ECOPact concrete is used to raise the new innovation campus of Living Tomorrow.