Use of sustainable building methods gains pace in Europe

While the assumption might be that the private sector is leading the adoption of sustainable construction techniques, this is not always the case as Jurrian Knijtijzer, managing director and founder of Finch Buildings told Real Asset Insight’s Richard Betts recently.

“When I started with Finch Buildings I thought that the private sector would be faster with adopting it than the public sector and we see the complete opposite. The public sector has this CO2 regulatory push to go to modular and timber construction.”

Finch Buildings has developed a modular building system that utilises timber glulam construction. “Timber construction needs, and deserves, scaling up much faster than it is,” he said.

“Our vision is to help all partners in the ecosystem to realise timber buildings more easily than is the case now, so that means that we help architects design timber buildings, we help factories produce timber buildings and we help contractors to realise buildings from the modules that we have come up with,” he said.

There is growing interest from the private sector but adoption is progressing at different rates in different places in Europe.

“I think the the biggest push will come from the European Union green deal and the taxonomy in Europe. That helps us tremendously because a lot of investors now say to their developers ‘we need timber buildings, we need to be ready for fund number nine and all the sustainability that goes along with it’.”

The need for reporting is also encouraging people to ask their subcontractors or contractors how sustainable concrete and is, which will mean a big change, Knijtijzer said.

The Netherlands has considerable experience of modular construction. “We have already done that for quite some time and it is increasingly adopted as a normal way of building,” he said, adding that this has been the case for the past 10 years.

However, the Dutch experience has revealed a need for different and more appropriate regulations.

“The normal building regs in the Netherlands are based on concrete It is difficult to meet this when performance is based on concrete.”

He said that it was recently discovered that in the Netherlands CO2 emissions are not factored in correctly. “So steel beams in the Netherlands look almost as sustainable as a timber beam while in reality the timber beam absorbs a lot of carbon and the steel beam emits a lot more CO2,” he said. Steel receives a discount because it is a long lasting material.

Thankfully, that is changing as new carbon regulations are being put forward.

Green deal objectives and local regulations are making a difference in Europe and are helping to increase interest in timber solutions.

Politics are also playing a greater role. “What we have seen in the last 10 years is that if governments are not pushing on regulation, you won’t see the market move as fast as if it’s forced.”