A framework for healthy, sustainable, and resilient buildings

10. April 2024

Solution provider

For more than 80 years, the VELUX Group has created better indoor environments by bringing daylight and fresh air into homes and other buildings all over the world. The VELUX Group was founded in Denmark and is today an international company with a presence in 37 countries.

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Challenge

The EU is not on track to reach the 2050 climate targets for energy and renovations. At the same time, the lack of a commonly accepted comprehensive definition of what constitutes healthy buildings hinders progress towards achieving healthy buildings.

Increasing building health has multiple positive impacts, making them financially viable, sustainable, and resilient to climate impacts. Above all, healthy buildings should be the only type of buildings in which people live, learn, work, play, or recover.

With the backdrop of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive recast, the Chaillot declaration that followed the Global Buildings and Climate Forum and 2024 being a big year of both national and EU elections, the adage that ‘it has never been more relevant than now’ once again holds true: the impetus of urgency to deliver healthy homes, workplaces, schools and hospitals as part of a more holistic policy framework is accompanied by a real opportunity to do so.

Lars Petersson
CEO of the VELUX Group

Solution

As a tool to deal with this challenge, VELUX and Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) launch a yearly report named “Healthy Buildings Barometer”, presenting benefits and solutions across the five dimensions of healthy buildings:

Five Dimensions Model

Using five dimensions, the Healthy Buildings Barometer provides an actionable framework for healthy buildings:

Improving mental and physical health
Designed for human needs
Sustainably built and managed
Resilient and adaptive
Empowering people

The Healthy Buildings Barometer provides policymakers and the building- and construction industry with a new framework to promote urgent need for healthier buildings.

Through literature review, framework development, and linking data to indicators, the report arrives at policy recommendations for building industry stakeholders and policymakers, highlighting three core messages of needed action:

Accelerate adoption of a comprehensive definition and framework of healthy buildings to drive progress
Prioritise high-quality data that tracks building health and occupant well-being
Integrate health, sustainability, and resilience in building policies

The 2024 edition of the report brings case studies from Denmark, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.

VELUX Living Places

Living Places seeks to create a housing typology that is affordable to build at scale and healthy to live in, with an ultra low carbon footprint.

Result

Across homes, workplaces, schools, and hospitals, the benefits of healthy buildings are immense. It is estimated that between 200,000 and 500,000 jobs annually across EU could be created through well-designed renovation programmes. The healthcare sector alone could save more than EUR 45 billion annually if all hospitals received well-designed efficiency measures.

Renovating all residential buildings in the EU to energy-efficient standards could save 44% of final energy for space heating. Furthermore, decarbonising the new build sector is feasible; a 41% reduction in embodied carbon through design for new builds cut costs by 9%, and increased construction efficiency can save 15% of costs.