No question about it, CO₂ emissions have to be reduced, and it makes the most sense to start where something can be obtained. The building sector is definitely one of them: In addition to traffic and industrial production, public and private buildings are one of the main sources of greenhouse gases. According to the Federal Ministry of Economics, this accounts for around a third of the total final energy requirement in Germany. But the building sector is lagging very behind when it comes to climate targets. If things continued at the same snail’s pace as before, it would fall far short of the climate targets set for 2030 of a 38 percent reduction in CO₂ by 2030. So what to do
Of course, promote new, environmentally friendly heating systems, plus energy-efficient refurbishment, but is that enough? “We don’t win the battle for the climate with thick insulation alone, we win it with smart controls,” says Bernhard Rohleder, General Manager of the Bitkom digital association. The previous funding measures had been too one-sidedly geared towards traditional measures. With the help of digital technologies, enormous amounts of greenhouse gases could be saved, “and that faster and with less investment than in insulating or renovating buildings,” says Rohleder. Digitization as a climate saver?
The potential for this is at least there: a lot of digital technology, such as intelligent heating controls through to programmable thermostats for radiators, can even be retrofitted. In a model project in a large apartment building in Berlin, retrofitting with temperature sensors, actuators for heating valves, control electronics and special software resulted in heating energy savings of 24 percent.
A lot of information is lost between the various trades
But not only smart technology can help to reduce energy consumption. Solutions that make building buildings themselves more efficient also contribute to this. While the planning of buildings has been done more and more with software on the computer instead of on the drawing board for decades, there are still many breaks in the process chain during the construction phase, says Patrik Heider. Data would be recorded on paper and would first have to be digitized again. Heider is the head of the Munich construction software start-up Thinkproject. The company doesn’t just want to make these breaks unnecessary. Because the construction work can already be simulated in the software, possible conflicts can be identified in advance, such as pipelines getting in each other’s way. The materials used and their properties are also recorded.
That is why it often fails today. Many different actors are involved before a large real estate project is in place. Starting with financing, through planning, construction and certification to operation, the responsibility changes again and again – and everyone brings their own systems with them. However, these often do not go together; at best, the data then have to be elaborately prepared in order to be able to pass them on. Information is often lost there.
But it is precisely these that would be decisive in order to be able to evaluate how sustainable a building really is. And that will soon be imperative. From next year on, investment and insurance advisors will no longer just ask their customers about their risk tolerance, but also how important the eco-balance of their investments is to them. So-called ESG criteria, i.e. information on environmental, social and corporate governance criteria, play a decisive role – also for real estate. In June, the EU Commission issued a document several hundred pages long published, in which it explains in detail which investments will in future meet the minimum ecological requirements and which will not. For example, soon only buildings that are in the top 15 percent of existing buildings in terms of energy efficiency at national or regional level will be considered sustainable.
Thanks to the right software, entire folders no longer have to be sent by post
The goal of the government guidelines is clear: to channel more money into sustainable business practices – and thus, among other things, to advance the energy transition. There is still a lot to be done in construction. At the same time, more and more capital is pushing its way into this area: stuck in the various forms of real estate funds alone according to the BVI fund association in this country recently almost 260 billion euros – almost a third more than three years earlier. In addition, there are mixed funds, buildings held directly or through equity investments and investments in real estate groups such as Vonovia, LEG or TAG.
In order for this to work, you first have to know what is actually in a building. How much CO₂ is produced in the manufacture of the materials used, how much is bound in the substances? The US software manufacturer Autodesk, for example, already offers such a computer. It is based on data from publicly available sources and enables planners to compare the CO₂ balance of various materials. It used to take entire teams days to do this, with the appropriate software it would be a matter of minutes, says Autodesk.
Building Information Modeling (BIM), i.e. the modeling of the data of a building, is what the type of software we are talking about is called. It creates 3-D models that remain consistent throughout the process and can be used by all project partners. “Where such software is used, the costs are more reasonable,” says Patrik Heider from the Munich start-up Thinkproject, an example of which is the construction of the Gotthard tunnel, the costs of which roughly corresponded to those of the planning. In addition, the digitized planning accelerates the projects, “there is no longer any need to send entire folders by post”. Project partners can also advise each other with digital support, they no longer have to meet physically somewhere – this not only helps, as is the case now in the pandemic.
20 percent of the material in construction is not used
Heider is “extremely fascinated by what digitization is doing”. The company plans to integrate even more options for this into its software in the future. In the future one will have to prove which materials have been used and what their environmental balance looks like. Thinkproject is already looking for possible acquisitions that could help. He is not worried about the future of his company. The need to catch up when it comes to digitization is so great that it can hold its own against large American IT companies. And the new building is buzzing: So incoming orders grew in the first eight months of this year by 1.5 percent in real terms compared to the previous year. Overall, the chances are good that it will be the ninth year in a row of growing business for the industry. All over the world, the signs are pointing to growth: 13,000 buildings are to be built every day and more than 1.1 million kilometers of roads are to be built every year, according to a study by Autodesk.
There is also a huge potential for savings. In construction, the rate of wasted material is currently around 20 percent, says Heider, but in the automotive industry it is less than one percent. With digitization, this quota is to be reduced. Heider also wants to use his company even more in the operation of buildings. The start-up boss believes that this would bring another advantage: companies like his would then be the owners of data even more than before. “This is our gasoline.”