Enabling environments for a sustainable and circular construction sector

Apie kvietimą

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes: Demonstrated environments that effectively enable the testing, validation, deployment and upscaling of NEB-aligned innovative construction solutions[1] are available to construction companies. Insights, data, evidence for replication and policy uptake, and practical blueprints are generated on the design, implementation and effectiveness of enabling environments and feed the three pillars of the NEB Academy[2]. Scope: The construction sector plays a central role in delivering on the EU’s climate, environmental, economic and social objectives. Accelerating its transition towards more sustainability and circularity is key to strengthen the competitiveness of the European construction industry and enhance global leadership. However, the uptake and deployment of innovation in the traditional[3] and offsite[4] construction sector is hampered by regulatory, institutional, fiscal, financial and societal barriers such as inadequate fiscal incentives, fragmented value chains, limited access to finance, insufficient standardisation, skills gaps, or low societal acceptance. In addition, access to real-life testing and demonstration environments remains insufficient, further constraining the validation and market uptake of innovative solutions. Accelerating the transition towards more sustainability and circularity in the construction sector thus requires supportive enabling environments that provide companies with spaces to test and validate their NEB-aligned innovative construction solutions in real-life conditions as well as appropriate regulatory, institutional, fiscal, financial and societal conditions where they can be deployed and scaled up. This topic should therefore support the development and demonstration of enabling environments which can take the form of: Physical innovation spaces, such as living labs or testbeds, where solutions can be tested and validated in real-life conditions; Frameworks providing supportive regulatory, institutional, fiscal, and financial conditions, such as regulatory sandboxes or innovations deals, to generate evidence on how existing conditions can be adapted to enable the deployment and scale-up of NEB-aligned construction solutions; Or a combination of both. Actions funded under this topic should contribute to bridging research, innovation and the deployment of solutions, enabling the transformation of the construction sector. By doing so, they will be an integral part of the NEB Academy, the NEB’s core infrastructure for capacity building and skills development, knowledge and research, and innovation and business development in the built environment. This topic contributes to and aligns with the Communication on the New European Bauhaus and the accompanying proposal for Council Recommendation, the Clean Industrial Deal, the Strategy for a Competitive and Sustainable EU Bioeconomy, the European Strategy for…