The project was approved by EASAC’s council in November 2019, and EASAC’s member academies nominated experts to form a Working Group in the first quarter of 2020. The work was done from Spring 2020 to Winter 2021, and the report was finalised in Spring 2021.
Co-chairs
Brian Norton, Royal Irish Academy, Ireland
Wim van Saarloos, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Netherlands Working Group members
Name Organisation Nominated by Country
Adisa Azapagic University of Manchester The Royal Society United
Kingdom Neven Duic University of Zagreb Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Croatia
Gerhard Fink Aalto University The Council of Finnish Academies Finland
Gunnar Grün Universität Stuttgart German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
Germany
Arild Gustavsen Norwegian University of Science and Technology
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Norway
Hugo Hens KU Leuven The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts Belgium
Soteris Kalogirou Cyprus University of Technology The Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts
Cyprus
Andrej Kitanovski University of Ljubljana The Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Slovenia Jarek Kurnitski Tallinn University of Technology The Estonian Academy of Sciences Estonia Tove Malmqvist
Stigell
KTH Royal Institute of Technology The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Sweden
Maria Nilsson Umeå University The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Sweden
Brian Norton Technological University Dublin and Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork
Royal Irish Academy Ireland
Michael Ornetzeder
The Austrian Academy of Sciences The Austrian Academy of Sciences Austria
Arno Schlüter ETH Zürich The Swiss Academy of Sciences Switzerland
František Simančík Slovak Academy of Sciences The Slovak Academy of Sciences Slovak Republic Marleen Spiekman Netherlands organisation for Applied
Scientific research TNO
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Netherlands Zsuzsa Szalay Budapest University of Technology and
Economics
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences Hungary
Jorn Toftum Technical University of Denmark The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
Denmark
Wim van Saarloos Instituut-
Lorentz, University of Leiden
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Netherlands
William Gillett EASAC Energy Programme Director EASAC secretariat United
Kingdom All Working Group meetings were held by Zoom because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A draft working document was produced using e-mail inputs in Spring 2020, and the first Working Group meeting was held as a kick-off workshop in five sessions on the 4, 8 and 9 June 2020, with invited speakers from the European Commission and other leading stakeholders. Most of the work was done by e-mail, with Working Group meetings on 20 July, 3 September, 10/11 November, 7 December 2020 and 8 February 2021.
Acknowledgements
EASAC thanks Brian Norton from the Technological University Dublin and Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork, and Wim van Saarloos from the Instituut-Lorentz, University of Leiden, for co-chairing the Working Group.
EASAC thanks Brian Norton and his colleagues Philippe Lemarchand, Kumar Raushan and Hani Khaled Alkhatib for their extensive contributions to the drafting of this report.
EASAC thanks the speakers from the European Commission (EC) and other leading stakeholders for their helpful contributions to its kick-off workshop: Philippe Moseley (EC EASME), Peter Vis (EC, retired), Peter Wouters (Belgian Building Research Institute), Diana Barglazan (EC DG Energy), Oliver Rapf (BPIE), Faidra Filippidou (EC JRC), Paolo Bertoldi (EC JRC), Waltraud Schmidt (Vienna Energy Centre), Sorcha Edwards (Housing Europe), Antonio Paparella (EC DG GROW), Josefina Lindholm (EC DG Environment). EASAC also thanks other experts from the European Commission who kindly provided advice during the course of the work: Pau Garcia Audi (EC DG Energy) and Bogdan Atanasiu (EC DG Energy).
EASAC thanks Felix Koninx for his contributions, notably his modelling of cumulative GHG emissions for the Renovation Wave, which he performed while working as a trainee at the EASAC secretariat.
EASAC thanks its Working Group members for their many detailed contributions, and members of the EASAC Energy Steering Panel for their advice.
Peer reviewers
EASAC thanks the following academy-nominated experts for their peer reviews (in March 2021):
Agis Papadopoulos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Davide Moscatelli, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Didier Roux, L’Académie française, France Egbert Lox, Umicore, Belgium
Emmanouil Kakaras, National Technical University of Athens, Greece Igor Lovrek, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Jeremy Watson, UCL, UK
Lars Samuelsson, Lund University, Sweden
Martin Thalfeldt, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia Matt Kennedy, Arup, Ireland
Matthias Sulzer, Empa – Swiss Lab’ for Materials Science and Technology, Switzerland Matti Kuittinen, Aalton University, Finland
Vytautas Martinaitis, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Lithuania
Annex 1 Construction material pyramid
The figure below is the Danish construction material pyramid (Cinark 2020) which is available online as an interactive tool but is set here as a static image.
It shows embodied carbon emissions in units of kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per cubic metre (kg CO2eq./m3). The values of embodied emissions shown are currently typical for materials in
the EU, but may be different in some regions and are expected to evolve over time. Many other performance requirements must also be considered when choosing building materials, including strength, stiffness, moisture tolerance, overall durability, fire safety and visual
appearance.
Annex 2 Primary energy requirements for new buildings in the EU (EC 2019e)
Member states NZEB definition status* Primary energy requirements (new buildings) (kWh/m2 per year)
Austria 160–170
Belgium (Brussels) 45–85
Belgium (Flanders) 32–45
Belgium (Wallonia) 95
Bulgaria 30–50
Croatia 30–80
Cyprus 100
Czech Republic 43–51
Denmark 20
Estonia 50–100
Finland 78–150
France 40–105
Germany 36–45.75
Greece Class A (new), B+ (existing)**
Hungary 65–100**
Ireland 45
Italy 15–20 & Class A1
Latvia 95
Lithuania A++
Luxembourg 45 & Class A/Class AAA
Malta 55–115
Netherlands 0–25
Poland 65–75
Portugal 33
Romania 93–117
Slovakia 32–54
Slovenia 50–80
Spain 40–70 & Class A
Sweden 30–75
United Kingdom 39–46
Yes
Under development
*Status April 2018.
**Updated information for Greece (Bololia and Androutsopoulos 2020), and for Hungary (7/2006 (V. 24.) TNM decree on the determination of the energy performance of buildings).
The primary energy requirements contain indicative information about their ranges for new buildings on the basis of a literature review. However, it should be noted that different calculation approaches might exist at national level;
therefore values cannot easily be compared with each other.