Predicciones para la construcción sostenible en la próxima década

The most solid regulatory prediction for the next decade is the generalization of mandatory embodied carbon limits in building codes. In 2024, only 8 countries (France, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Canada) have regulations in force or in the implementation phase that limit CO₂ emissions associated with construction materials. UNEP predicts that 30 countries will have adopted equivalent regulations before 2030, driven by the revised EU EPBD (2024), which requires Member States to calculate and declare the GWP of the life cycle of all new buildings over 1,000 m² from 2028 and of all new buildings from 2030. In Spain, the CTE update expected for 2026-2027 will foreseeably incorporate an embodied carbon indicator based on the Level(s) framework, with reference values estimated at 500-700 kg CO₂eq/m² for collective housing and 600-900 kg CO₂eq/m² for commercial buildings, according to preparatory work by the Ministry of Transport (2024).

The impact of this regulation will be quantifiable in the selection of materials and construction systems. According to projections by the World Green Building Council (2023), the mandatory calculation of embodied carbon will shift between 15% and 25% of conventional concrete's market share toward low-carbon concretes (with 30-70% clinker substitution), structural timber (CLT, glulam), and bio-based materials within 5-7 years of its entry into force. In France, where RE2020 came into effect in January 2022, the use of structural timber in collective housing rose from 4% in 2021 to 11% in 2024, and the share of low-carbon concretes (such as ECOPact) grew from 8% to 22% in the same period (Unicem, 2024). The conservative prediction for Spain is that the structural timber share in new housing will rise from the current 1.5% to 5-8% by 2030 and 12-18% by 2035, while that of low-carbon concretes will grow from 5% to 25-35% over the same horizon.

Offsite industrialized construction will consolidate as the dominant method in specific market segments. The consultancy McKinsey (2023) projects that modular construction will represent 15-20% of new global building construction by 2030, up from the current 6-8%, and that leading countries (Sweden, Japan, Singapore) will reach shares of 35-50%. In Sweden, 45% of single-family homes are already built with industrialized timber systems, with construction timelines of 8-12 weeks (compared to 6-12 months for conventional construction) and waste generation 70-90% lower thanks to CNC cutting with millimeter precision. The Swedish company Lindbäcks produced 3,500 modular CLT homes in 2023, with average embodied carbon of 180 kg CO₂eq/m², 55% lower than the conventional Swedish concrete dwelling (400 kg CO₂eq/m²).

In Spain, industrialized construction currently represents less than 2% of new housing, but forecasts from the Construction Industry Observatory (2023) place this share at 8-12% by 2030. Spanish companies Aedas Homes and Neinor Homes have announced commitments to industrialize 20-30% of their production by 2028. The development of 168 industrialized precast concrete homes in Rivas-Vaciamadrid (Madrid, 2023), developed by AVINTIA, was executed in 14 months (compared to the conventional 24 months), with 80% less on-site waste and 60% lower water consumption. The initial additional cost of industrialization (estimated at 5-10% above conventional construction in Spain in 2024) is offset by reduced timelines, lower accident rates (-50% according to SEOPAN), and factory-controlled execution quality, which reduces post-sale costs by 40%. The prediction is that cost parity between industrialized and conventional construction will be reached in Spain between 2027 and 2029, when production scale exceeds 5,000 homes/year per manufacturer.

The electrification of heating and the decarbonization of the electrical grid will transform the operational emissions profile of buildings. The International Energy Agency (IEA, 2023) forecasts that heat pumps will cover 50% of building heating demand globally by 2045, up from 10% in 2022. In the EU, heat pump sales reached 3 million units in 2022, and the European Heat Pump Association forecasts 7 million units annually by 2030. In Spain, heat pump sales grew by 28% in 2023 compared to 2022 (AFEC, 2024), reaching 680,000 cumulative installed units, with a forecast of 2.5 million by 2030. The ban on fossil fuel boilers in new buildings, in effect in Denmark since 2013, Norway since 2020, and the Netherlands since 2026, will foreseeably extend to all EU Member States before 2030 under the revised EPBD, which requires the progressive phase-out of fossil fuel boilers.

Distributed generation and storage will turn buildings into active nodes of the electrical grid. The IEA (2023) projects that rooftop photovoltaics will represent 40% of new global solar capacity installed by 2030, and that domestic battery storage will grow from 10 GWh of cumulative capacity in 2022 to 100 GWh by 2030. In Spain, Royal Decree 244/2019 on self-consumption has driven the installation of 5,800 MW of self-consumption photovoltaics through 2024, with a forecast of 19,000 MW by 2030 according to the updated PNIEC. Energy communities, with 1,200 registered in Spain in 2024, will enable sharing solar generation among neighboring buildings, maximizing collective self-consumption to 60-80% compared to 30-40% for individual self-consumption. The prediction is that by 2035, 50-60% of new buildings in Spain will be energy-positive (generating more energy than they consume on an annual basis), up from the current 5%, thanks to the combination of high-efficiency envelopes, heat pumps with COP above 4, rooftop and facade photovoltaics, and storage.

Sustainability will shift from being a differentiating attribute to becoming a market requirement that determines real estate value. An analysis by JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle, 2024), based on 32,000 office transactions across 18 European cities, documented a rental premium of 11-23% for buildings with environmental certification (LEED, BREEAM, DGNB) and a sales premium of 8-16%. The vacancy rate for certified offices is 4-7 percentage points lower than for non-certified ones. CBRE's forecast (2024) is that by 2030, 60% of institutional investors will refuse to acquire buildings that do not meet the criteria of the European green taxonomy, up from 28% in 2024, creating a dual market with a growing value gap between green assets and conventional assets known as the "brown discount."

Sustainable financing will accelerate the transition. Green bonds issued for building construction reached 95 billion EUR in 2023 globally (Climate Bonds Initiative, 2024), and green mortgages (with interest rates 20-50 basis points lower for high-efficiency buildings) represented 5% of the European mortgage market, with a forecast of reaching 15-25% by 2030. In Spain, CaixaBank, BBVA, and Santander have offered since 2022 green mortgages with discounts of 10-30 basis points for dwellings with energy rating A or B, and the EIB has financed energy renovation programs in Spain for 2.4 billion EUR between 2020 and 2024. The prediction for the next decade is the convergence of environmental regulation (EPBD, taxonomy), financial pressure (capital penalties for non-green assets), and user demand (willingness to pay 5-10% more for sustainable homes according to an Idealista survey, 2024), creating a market where non-sustainable construction will be economically unviable before it becomes legally prohibited.