Cirkulær Byggeri - sektorudviklingsprojekt

The building and construction sector is selected by the European Commission as a key product value chain in the transition towards a circular economy (CE) due to the major resource consumption, waste generation, and GHG emissions from this sector. In this sector development project, the construction and building sector is interviewed, focusing on describing the transformation toward CE as seen from the inside towards the larger perspectives. The findings are reported on the sector's understanding of challenges, barriers, and opportunities in the transition towards CE. A major aim is to identify the challenges faced by the sector itself and to evaluate the research and innovation that can aid in meeting these challenges.

The interviews showed lack of common definition for CE in the sector, the stage in the transition differs from no actual plans to CE being the main driver in the company, and that clarification of risk/responsibility issues is necessary at many levels in order to implement CE in the sector. This point to a second conclusion rendering the industry's own definition of potential obstacles as incomplete or insufficient to determine pathways for the changes required by the sector. Important demonstration projects have been build or are planned, however, to scale and to common practice the interviews pointed at needs for: a common definition and terminology for CE, methods for documenting the economic and environmental gains, technical methods for documenting: the quality of reused materials, processes which enables scaling, development of new value chains and framework conditions in support of circularity potentially requiring an external push to move the sector towards a circular economy.