This Green Paper, authored by BPIE together with Velux, RISE, NoObjectives and Artelia, puts forward a pioneering framework for rethinking Europe’s approach to housing, renovation and climate action. Rather than treating new construction as the default response to housing shortages, the paper argues for a fundamental shift in perspective: Europe’s existing building stock is not a limitation to work around, but the reserve it should build its future from.

Drawing on a dataset of over 10,000 building archetypes representing the EU building stock, the paper models nine distinct “better-use measures”, from reshaping and reclaiming homes, to repurposing empty offices, to unlocking attics and building upward. Each measure is then mapped against both its carbon impact and material footprint. The result is the Impact Framework, a new prioritisation tool which ranks interventions by the greatest environmental and social return for the least resource use: renovate first, extend where needed, and build new only as a last resort.

Key findings:

• Between 50 and 107 million homes could be unlocked from Europe’s existing buildings, housing up to 246 million people — without breaking new ground.
• Better use of the existing stock could avoid between 3.9 and 19 billion tonnes of CO₂ over the next 50 years — up to 32% of the construction industry’s footprint over that period.
• Up to 13 billion tonnes of material use could be avoided, easing pressure on ecosystems and reducing Europe’s exposure to volatile resource supply chains.
• 75% of the total mitigation potential comes from renovation-led measures alone — reclaiming, reshaping, refining and repurposing what already stands.

By treating efficiency and sufficiency as complementary rather than competing strategies, the Green Paper offers policymakers, investors and the building industry a new way to address the housing, climate, resource and health crises simultaneously through the buildings Europe already has.

This is an invitation to discussion as much as a technical analysis.  The Green Paper is an assessment of the theoretical and technical potential of how to make better use of Europe’s existing building stock: from a construction policy that is focused on delivering new buildings, to a broader housing policy concerned with providing a diversity of housing options. Europe’s housing crisis is not simply a shortage of supply, but also a mismatch between the housing that is available and the housing people need.

Realising this potential in practice will depend on overcoming significant economic, social, cultural, regulatory, and technical barriers. BPIE and its partners co-authors call on policymakers, industry, researchers and civil society to help translate this potential into the policies, financing models and practices needed to unlock it.

Download the Green Paper below and visit VELUX’s Re:Living – An experiment in scaling renovation to learn more.