An exploration of the possibilities for the accelerated application of renewable building materials in construction and infrastructure.
We must do everything we can to achieve a 100% circular construction economy by 2050. This is what the Circular Construction Economy Transition Team (CBE) says. According to the model of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, this involves four steps: building less, less use of materials, high-quality reuse and use of bio-based building materials.
Opportunities and the need for acceleration
It is now clear that we can only meet a maximum of 20% of the required material requirements with high-quality reuse. There is a so-called Circularity Gap of at least 80% (EIB/Metabolic and ICLEI). So there are opportunities – or better: urgency – for the use of biobased building materials.
Moreover, there are great opportunities for linking and combining policy goals. Such as CO2 reduction, CO2 storage, lower environmental impact, lower nitrogen emissions, healthier indoor environment, cleaner construction site, sustainable forest management, and - especially for agricultural products that can be used as building materials - creating local production chains and a new business model for farmers.
The share of biobased materials in construction in the Netherlands is currently low: 2% wood and 0,1% other biobased materials. There are more and more great examples of biobased materials. But significant acceleration is still needed to achieve our goals.
The research assignment
The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) has commissioned consultancy and engineering firm Arcadis for the Circular Construction Economy Transition Team and in collaboration with Rijkswaterstaat to identify which biobased building materials have the greatest opportunities for scaling up, in the short and long term. (This concerns biobased building materials for the BenU and civil engineering, with the exception of wood, because a lot of information is already available about this and an acceleration is already taking place).
Arcadis identifies the six most important product groups. In the civil engineering sector, bioasphalt, bioconcrete and biocomposite are important material flows. In the BenU sector this concerns bio-based insulation material, sheet material for facades and roofs and construction materials.
Biobased construction offers a solution for the scarcity of raw materials, security of supply and CO2 capture. Biobased sometimes also offers added value in the field of health of residents and users of biobased buildings as well as construction workers on the construction site. And bio-based construction allows for fast, flexible, prefab and modular construction. Even fewer installations are needed in bio-based buildings, which is favorable for a business case.
And finally
Arcadis also indicates what would have to happen to achieve such a scale-up. The focus is still too much on bottlenecks and innovation. The market is also very fragmented. While the urgency and potential are now very clear. In broad terms, what we need is more focus, a better level of organization of the sector, the government removing barriers, large clients taking on a role as launching customers, performance agreements between government and the market, minimum standards for admixture and more control. And courage and decisiveness. These points are elaborated in more detail in the report. Who takes the first steps? The recent attention and developments will hopefully act as a flywheel to stimulate the entire chain to move from niche to mainstream for sustainable and future-proof construction.
