What is the potential for prefabricated buildings to decrease costs and contribute to meeting EU environmental targets?

Abstract

The European Union (EU-27) targets buildings’ decarbonization by 2050, and prefabrication presents an op-portunity to reduce buildings and construction sector impacts. A stock-based approach was developed to measure the influence of wide adoption of building prefabrication in the EU-27 building stock from 2020 to 2050. Impacts and costs of five typologies using conventional or prefabricated construction systems were assessed for three cities – Lisbon, Berlin, and Stockholm – and three insulation levels. Results were calculated at the building and country levels and then combined at the stock level. Global warming (GW) varies between 5kgCO2eq/m2 for prefabricated light steel framing (prefab_LSF) medium- or a high-rise in France and 85kgCO2eq/m2 for the conventional concrete single-family (SF) in Poland. Life cycle costs vary between around 900€/m2 for multi- family buildings in prefabricated LSF in Bulgaria and over 11 000€/m2 for an SF in conventional concrete in Luxembourg. Prefabrication can further decrease building stock burdens up to 6% and reduce building stock costs up to 10%. The developed building stock model has proven to be a fast and reliable tool to forecast the market dynamics when introducing a technological innovation, such as prefabrication. Prefabrication can contribute to achieving the EU-27 targets and reduce construction costs, increasing the construction sector’s productivity and sustainability.