Sustainability in metallic carpentry

Sustainability in metal construction

Starting from sustainable buildings to think of a more Green Italy.

The buildings represent a great potential in achieving the EU objectives of fighting climate change, and their enhancement with environmentally friendly materials and energy efficiency becomes a more vital stimulus than ever for the Italian construction market.

The experts of the Green Building Council, in fact, have drawn up a real manifesto to urge politics and institutions to recognize the role of the construction sector.

The manifesto clearly highlights the weight of green building in Italy and provides themes and tools for change

The 7 pillars of sustainable construction

GBC Italia’s proposal stems from the certainty of what can be achieved by working correctly on buildings. Buildings in Europe are responsible for 36% of all emissions, 40% of energy consumption, 50% of the extraction of raw materials and 21% of water consumption.

To change course, this manifesto focuses on 7 themes:

• decarbonisation: promoting buildings with zero CO2 emissions, relaunching the annual redevelopment of 3% of public buildings, encouraging energy communities, eco-urban neighborhoods and green mobility, supporting cases of deep-renovation;
• circular economy: to encourage the use of recycled components coming from the selective deconstruction of other buildings, to activate a national platform of materials and component exchange systems;
• water efficiency: introduce ad hoc indicators, such as in energy performance, and encourage technologies useful for cutting drinking water and waste water consumption;
• land use and biodiversity: protecting natural habitats, encouraging the reclamation and renaturalization of abandoned areas, implementing rules on land use, limiting hydraulic and hydrological invariance in land use transformations;
• resilience: integrate adaptation objectives into urban planning policies and adopt territorial plans, medium (10 years) and long-term (30 years) climate scenarios;
• well-being and health: integrate the internal environment into national deep-renovation or new construction strategies, introduce building health indicators, activate a requalification plan for schools;
• justice in the transition: activate a widespread redevelopment plan of social housing residences to combat energy poverty.

How to get Green buildings

The manifesto suggests legislative, regulatory and financial tools that aim to eliminate CO2 emissions from buildings by 2050.
Objective that GBC Italia defines as “demanding but achievable”, provided that further actions are put in place:

• partnership between institutions and supply chain, with GBC Italia as reference partner;
• hierarchization of objectives and policies based on multi-criteria technical evaluations;
• training and information campaigns for a new culture of sustainable construction.

On the technological level, GBC Italia supports the importance of monitoring the performance of buildings through national public platforms, activating a Building Plan 4.0 and promoting the adoption of energy-environmental protocols in accordance with European objectives and the Level (s) framework, or tiered.

And after coronavirus?

Impossible not to think about the current emergency health situation. In fact, in the coming months Italy will be called to make decisive choices for the revitalization of the economy and social cohesion. The transition to the circular economy and sustainable construction can therefore represent the key to relaunching the construction sector.

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