News item | 23-12-2022 | 10:28
Building with more biobased raw materials, stricter requirements for the sustainability of new construction and reducing CO2emissions from building materials. In the coming years, the cabinet will do much more to build greener. This is stated by Minister De Jonge (Public Housing & Spatial Planning) also on behalf of Minister Adema (Agriculture) and State Secretary Heijnen (Infrastructure) in a letter to the House of Representatives. An experiment to grow bio-raw materials such as hemp, elephant grass and flax on 13 agricultural lands and develop them into building materials is the concrete starting shot of the cabinet’s wish.
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Minister De Jonge: “The construction task is huge, as is the sustainability task. In order for the two to go hand in hand, we need the CO2reduce emissions throughout construction. Biobased building and renovating is therefore very promising, for the construction industry but also for the farmer.”
Subsidies and green requirements
To ensure that green building does not remain a wish but becomes reality, the way in which construction is done must be adjusted. This is done through a higher environmental performance requirement and subsidies for environmentally friendly insulation.
Building green with the farmer
In addition to the requirements, there will be more room for new collaborations and room for innovative farmers: from 1 January 2023, the government will start via the project BuildingBalance subsidizing experiments with bio-raw materials in 13 field labs. In those 13 places biobased raw materials such as hemp, flax and elephant grass are grown, processed and used to make building materials. During the process, it is investigated how the cultivation of the raw materials for applications such as insulation can be carried out as well as possible.
The experiment BuildingBalance will run in 2023-2024 and will receive a financial government grant of €1.8 million.