Introduction of the study by ACE President, Ruth Schagemann: "For this study, the Climate Positive Europe Alliance (CPEA) and ACE  developed, together, a slide deck that explains the EU Taxonomy and shows how it creates opportunities for sustainable architectural design, mapping design elements against existing Taxonomy criteria.The aim is to capitalise on the opportunities the EU Taxonomy offers for built environment professionals. In the slides the following topics are tackled:

• European regulatory context
• Taxonomy relevance
• Taxonomy compliance through the building lifecycle 
• Increasing value for all stakeholders
• Outlook sustainable finance
• Glossary

Being responsible for 40% of global energy consumption and around  the same amount in total greenhouse gas emissions,  construction and real estate are crucial for the successful transition to a low-carbon economy. The European Green Deal is the Commission’s response to tackle environmental challenges. It aims to transform Europe's economy into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive one.

Consequently, the European Sustainable Finance Strategy, which has emerged  from the EU Sustainable Finance Action Plan, sets objectives tomassively increase sustainable investments and define their qualities, enabling companies to have access to green financing options by standardising reporting requirements to reflect sustainability risks and integrating them into the risk management of banks.  It is hoped that the taxonomy will play a key role in ensuring that both public and private investments delivering the economic recovery from the COVID19-pandemic, will ensure resilience and sustainability. 

Recent years have seen a significant rise in investments that carry the adjectives “green”, “sustainable”, or “ESG” (products considering environmental, social and governance aspects) in the name. However, until very recently, there were no principles and metrics for the assessment of the sustainability of economic activities. The Taxonomy Regulation aims to classify business activities for their sustainability and will be one of the big drivers towards a climate neutral continent by  2050.  Project developers and building owners will be driven by the investment gap and the EU’s Sustainable Finance Regulations to ensure that projects are resilient and have minimised risks for accessing green financing. As a result, the demand for Taxonomy-eligible assets is expected to increase. 

Consequently, designing Taxonomy conformant buildings will create more value for those clients, who must comply with  the regulation. Architects can significantly influence the early stages of the building lifecycle. To ensure information on design features is not lost between the design and commissioning of the building, you can  ensure that knowledge is transferred so that the buildings’ circularity and sustainability potential is utilised". 

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