The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning

Research Project: Support for sufficiency approaches in the building sector

Project briefing

  • Status Completed
  • Project duration September 2021 – September 2022
  • Programme Future Building

Sufficiency can make a significant contribution to climate protection and other sustainability goals in the building sector. To this end, the project identified approaches, quantified potential savings and described proposals for policy instruments.

Background

The building sector faces major challenges in meeting climate and sustainability targets due to its large environmental impacts and the investment cycles associated with the long life cycles and useful lives of buildings. Policy and planning measures to date are mainly implemented in the context of efficiency (how are resources used efficiently) and consistency strategies (how are resources used in an environmentally friendly way) to reduce environmental impacts. In comparison, sufficiency (how much consumption do planetary boundaries and global justice allow) receives much less attention.

Objective

The aim of this project was to define sufficiency for the building sector and to identify suitable technical and organisational approaches to support it. In addition, proposals were developed on how these sufficiency approaches could be integrated into political and legal frameworks and instruments.

Contractors of the research project were: ifeu – Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung Heidelberg gGmbH, Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie gGmbH and BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg.

Contact us

  • Monika Schröder
    Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development
    Division WB 2 "Instrumente zur Emissionsminderung im Gebäudebereich"
    Phone: +49 228 99401-1636
    Email: monika.schroeder@bbr.bund.de

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