On Wednesday, 21 May, SIRCULAR was presented at the CONSTRUMAT 2025 trade fair, which took place in Barcelona from 20 to 22 May 2025.
With over 40 years of experience, CONSTRUMAT has become a major showcase for innovations that are driving the construction and renovation sectors towards a more sustainable, technological and efficient future. SIRCULAR partners ITeC and AHC used the opportunity to present SIRCULAR project.
The Housing Agency of Catalonia, represented by the Head of Sustainability and R&D in the Building Control Area, Eva Paris, and the Building Sustainability and R&D Officer, Marta Arrufí, presented ‘Sustainability, Circular Economy and Life Cycle Analysis in Renovation’.
During their presentation, the speakers outlined the key challenges facing the construction industry in the context of implementing the European Union’s Green Deal and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and how these are transforming technical requirements and industry regulations.
Eva Paris then explained the European directives that promote the integration of environmental criteria, and how these directives are being transposed into technical requirements within the sector’s regulations. She also highlighted that the Global Warming Potential indicator and the Digital Product Passport for construction materials will soon be introduced in the next update of the Spanish Technical Building Code (CTE).
Marta Arrufí emphasised that the new regulations are moving away from the traditional focus of Energy Performance Certificates on energy and operational carbon towards a more holistic and circular perspective. This broader analysis of environmental impacts (going beyond energy) and the building’s entire life cycle (going beyond the use phase) requires a new framework that is more interdisciplinary, collaborative and digitalised, incorporating the entire value chain and multi-criteria evaluation.
Finally, they explained how the European SIRCULAR project, of which AHC is a partner, is developing solutions to address these challenges. They invited attendees to participate in the upcoming workshop on specific solutions to the challenges of building decarbonisation in the construction sector, which is planned for 30 September in Barcelona and is being organised together with the Inbuilt project.
Author: Marta Arrufí
