DRASTIC – Demonstrating Real & Affordable Sustainable building solutions with Top-level whole life-cycle performance and Improved Circularity

Paving the way

DRASTIC – the acronym for Demonstrating Real & Affordable Sustainable building solutions with Top-level whole life-cycle performance and Improved Circularity – will pave the way for significant whole life-cycle environmental impact reduction in new construction and (deep-energy) retrofit by demonstrating affordable innovative circular solutions in 5 different geographical zones in Europe, covering:

• different building layers, accounting for 90% of GHG emissions
• raw materials, accounting for 72% GHG emissions
• buildings typologies, accounting for 80% of all buildings
• circular strategies, reaching up to 60% of GHG emission reduction
• local drivers.

The demonstrators untap on EU scale the potential of 491 MTCO2-eq savings annually, and a financial divergence potential of 33.4 B€ annually, within defined market conditions and based on circular business models.

To reach this ambitious goal, 23 partners from 8 European countries are collaborating, covering the entire construction sector value chain and supported by a co-creation strategy with relevant stakeholders – with EnergyVille / VITO as both project and technical coordinator.

To assess and validate the solutions, an innovative multi-cyclic performance assessment framework will be developed by EnergyVille / VITO and implemented in digital environments, integrating:

• multi-cycle life cycle assessment (M-LCA)
• multi-cycle life cycle costing (M- LCC)
• circularity and sufficiency key performance indicators for construction and building-related products and components.

Novel data-driven tools – covering quality evaluation, thermal efficiency, automatic identification of assets and their reusability condition, multi-cycle traceability and social acceptance – will be enhanced, demonstrated and combined in a toolbox integrated in a common digital platform, going beyond a digital building logbook.

High impact dissemination and communication of results/key deliverables will be led by the World Green Building Council and maximized by its global network.

The DRASTIC project will contribute to the objectives of the EU by demonstrating the feasibility of promising and affordable new technologies, processes and products combined with new business models for faster market uptake, leading towards more sustainable buildings with:

• reduced life-cycle carbon;
• high life-cycle performance;
• reduced life-cycle costs.

5 specific key sub-objectives

1. To iteratively guide the DRASTIC technical solutions developments by assessing the whole life-cycle performance and improved circularity – from an environmental (M-LCA), an economic (M-LCC), as well as a social (acceptance/sufficiency) point of view.
2. To enable the roll-out of multi-cycle technical solutions for high life-cycle performance and improved circularity in EU markets by demonstrating and validating them.
3. To facilitate the implementation of DRASTIC circular solutions and methods by integrating overall sustainability, multi-cycle traceability and quality performance in a common digital platform with novel data-driven tools integrated in a toolbox.
4. To ensure a wider deployment and market uptake of DRASTIC circular solutions and methods by developing innovative business models based on an ecosystem approach.
5. To build awareness of the valuable DRASTIC results through dissemination and maximization of opportunities for exploitation.

In order to meet these specific objectives, DRASTIC will demonstrate innovative design methods and solutions within 5 demonstrators that cover different life cycle stages and with high potential for overall impact reduction (WP3).

The demonstrators will benefit from a common multi-cycle design guidance and assessment framework (WP2) for application in new and existing buildings on different building layers to support decision-making for all value chain actors.

DRASTIC will provide digital tools connected to a digital platform (WP4). This will support an optimal design of the DRASTIC solutions and the validation of the sustainability performance. Results are integrated in Digital Building Logbooks.

DRASTIC’s demonstrators are located in 5 different climatic and geographical zones in Europe – Germany, Spain, France, Norway and Estonia – covering different raw materials, buildings topologies, building layers and circular strategies, driven by different local drivers and environmental, social and economic conditions. DRASTIC investigates how these diverse conditions in the ecosystem create economic, environmental and social value, and how this can be included in regional exploitation roadmaps (booster kits) (WP5 and WP6).

Role of EnergyVille / VITO

EnergyVille / VITO is responsible for 2 key aspects of the project:

1. Firstly, we are responsible for the overall project management and technical coordination.
2. Secondly, EnergyVille / VITO leads the development of an innovative multi-cyclic guideline and performance assessment framework, integrating multi-cycle life cycle assessment (M-LCA), multi-cycle Life Cycle Costing (M-LCC), circularity and sufficiency indicators for construction and building related products and components. The framework includes methodological guidelines for both the product and building level. Furthermore, it will define requirements regarding data collection and the environmental impact assessment of the developed circular product developments and their application into the selected building demonstrators.

In addition, EnergyVille / VITO will play a supportive role during the:

• development and implementation of novel data-driven tools covering quality evaluation, thermal efficiency, automatic identification of assets and their reusability condition, multi-cycle traceability and social acceptance will be enhanced, demonstrated and combined in a toolbox integrated in a common digital platform, going beyond a digital building logbook.
• creation of innovative circular business models for the construction industry to address reuse and decarbonization pathways.
• creation of awareness of remanufacturing in order to increase the demand side to fasten the market uptake.
• dissemination, communication and exploitation, including stakeholder engagement.

Consortium

The DRASTIC consortium brings together 23 partners from 8 European countries: Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme under Grant agreement ID 101123330

Want to know more?

To learn more about the DRASTIC project, feel free to visit the official project website or get in touch with our expert, Michiel Ritzen.

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