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

The European Union (EU-27) targets buildings' decarbonization by 2050, and prefabrication presents an opportunity 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 5kgCO(2) eq/m(2) for prefabricated light steel framing (prefab_LSF) medium- or a high-rise in France and 85kgCO(2)eq/m(2) for the conventional concrete single-family (SF) in Poland. Life cycle costs vary between around 900(sic)/m(2) for multifamily buildings in prefabricated LSF in Bulgaria and over 11 000(sic)/m(2) 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.

Automated summary

The EU-27 aims to decarbonize buildings by 2050, with prefabrication offering the potential to reduce the environmental impact and costs of the construction sector. By adopting prefabrication, building stock burdens can be decreased by up to 6% and building stock costs reduced by up to 10%, contributing to increased productivity and sustainability in the construction industry.