12. Building materials

The grey energy content of building materials can be found in several sources.

New buildings are increasingly energy-efficient during their operational phase. This is largely due to better insulation, imposed by increasingly stringent thermal regulations that require builders to comply with maximum thermal consumption limits. The RT 2012 (2012 thermal regulation) requires consumption to be below 50 kWh/m ² per year, and the RT 2020 lowers this value to 12 kWh/m ² /year. Buildings have an average lifespan of around a century, and account for the bulk of our real estate stock....