Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the buildings and construction sector is crucial to achieving the European Union’s goal of climate neutrality. Over a third of the EU’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings, and the large material flows associated with construction and demolition further add to their environmental impact. Meanwhile, the sector is marked by a low level of digitalisation and data availability. Improved access to quality building data for stakeholders in the sector is key to unlocking a resource-efficient and economically viable transition to a climate-neutral buildings and construction sector by 2050.

The potential of a common repository for building data – a digital building logbook (DBL) – as a driver and enabler of improved resource efficiency in the sector has caught the interest of EU policymakers. But is the EU policy framework fit to support a broad uptake of DBLs in Member States, and to fully leverage their benefits?

As part of the Horizon Europe project, Demo-BLog, BPIE has developed a policy factsheet that explains what DBLs are, how they have been integrated in previous European strategies and action plans, their position among other building information tools and recommendations on how to unleash their full potential in the current EU policy framework.

BPIE recommendations to the European Commission are: