Decarbonizing Real Estate: the Low Carbon Building Initiative (LCBI) announces first results of its pilot phase with 15 pioneering projects across Europe
The Low Carbon Building Initiative (LCBI), a non-profit aiming at reducing carbon emissions in the real estate industry, is thrilled to announce, at the SIBCA Conference, the culmination of its pilot phase with experimentation on 16 projects across Europe, including Luxembourg.
This exciting milestone marks a significant step towards harmonizing carbon measurement practices in the European real estate sector. Such harmonization would provide a powerful signal to the market and help to unlock further private sector investment in low carbon buildings and bring down CO2 emissions.
A Unified Approach to
Measure Building Carbon Footprint
The real estate industry is responsible for 39% of European CO2 emissions. Calculating carbon emissions at each stage of a building’s life cycle – construction, operations, and end of life –, with a harmonized methodology across Europe, is necessary to quantify and compare real carbon footprints of buildings. Today, such a common language does not exist.
To address this pressing issue, the Low Carbon Building Initiative (LCBI) assembled a consortium of technical experts, alongside major real estate stakeholders. Together, they have worked since 2022 to create a common European carbon accounting language. This methodology includes specific carbon emissions targets – basis to obtain LCBI label – providing a clear path towards achieving lower carbon emissions.
A 6-months pilot-phase allowed us to test the new metric. LCBI is delighted to acknowledge the significant contributions of the projects and teams that participated to that pilot phase: including BPI Real Estate.
6 months of testing across 7 European countries:
key Insights and Findings
The new LCBI metric has been experimented on 15 projects across Europe: in Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Netherlands. Using the pilot phase as a testing ground, LCBI gathered critical insights and findings:
- A Common European Framework: one of the key findings of the pilot phase is that it is indeed possible to establish a common European framework for measuring carbon footprints, thanks to data transparency and completion assessment. LCBI's efforts have paved the way for a unified approach to low-carbon in the industry.
- The Challenge of Data Completeness: LCBI also identified that "data completeness" is a significant challenge. Ensuring that all necessary data is available and accurate for the life-cycle assessment of buildings is crucial but can be complex. LCBI is working to address this challenge by providing guidance and standards for data collection.
- Both a reporting and a steering tool: navigating between other initiatives and certification schemes, LCBI proposes a unified approach between project level assessments and ESG reporting.
- Regarding embodied carbon, a key finding and achievement is that projects become comparable when they report both a carbon footprint and its associated scope.
Unveiling at the SIBCA & LCBI next steps
These developments were revealed on September 20th at the SIBCA Conference during a LCBI roundtable discussion.
As next steps, LCBI methodology will be adapted, based on issues raised by pilot projects (adaptations to national electricity grids, access to quantitative data, minimum scope of assessment), with objective to have a label ready to be delivered for Q1 2024 by Bureau Veritas.
As LCBI continues to pave the way for a low-carbon real estate industry, these partnerships across 7 European countries underline the collective commitment to creating a more environmentally responsible future.
Press contact
BPI Real Estate
Morgane Stok
- Sustainability Officer
About BPI Real Estate
BPI Real Estate is the real estate division of the multidisciplinary group CFE, founded in 1880 and active in Belgium, Luxembourg and Poland in 4 business lines with strong growth potential because they have the potential to shape the world of tomorrow: real estate design and development, multitechnics, construction and renovation and sustainable investments. With a wealth of expertise acquired over the past 35 years, BPI Real Estate's ambition is to challenge the status quo and bring about positive change in real estate development in order to deploy innovative, inclusive and eco-responsible urban planning aimed at increasing the well-being of future generations. BPI Real Estate develops this know-how in the residential, office, retail, services and special products sectors. The company also brings its expertise in real estate design and development to Wood Shapers, a Belgian and Luxembourg company launched at the end of 2019 by BPI Real Estate and CFE Contracting (both part of the CFE group) that focuses primarily on the development, design and sustainable construction of wood and prefabricated materials.
Low Carbon Building Initiative
Cécile Dap
cecile.dap@batimentbascarbone.org
About Low Carbon Building Initiative
The Low Carbon Building Initiative (LCBI), launched in 2022, unites major European real-estate stakeholders to promote low carbon buildings and reduce the CO2 emissions of European real estate by half (measured in a LifeCycle Analysis). To date LCBI sponsors include AxaIM, Bouygues Immobilier, BNP Paribas Real Estate, BPI Real Estate, Covivio, Generali Real Estate, Icamap, Ivanhoe Cambridge, NSI, WO2. The group is active across the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany. LCBI aims to create the first pan-European low carbon label measuring the carbon footprint of real estate based on a Life-Cycle Analysis. LCBI set up a scientific committee with experts and certifiers to work on the first version of the LCBI label. Artelia and Elioth are co-pilots of the scientific committee, which also includes the French Association BBCA, One Click LCA and Drees & Sommer. Bureau Veritas is the preferred certifier for the future label, expected by the end of 2023.
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