This April, EnviroSustain was excited to attend GBCI Europe Circle in Barcelona. We were once again pleased to be sponsors of the GBCI Europe event.
While the event is billed as a ‘LEED community reunion’ and some of the topics are in the content of LEED in Europe, it has grown beyond that in its second year. It is a chance for property owners, investors, architects, entrepreneurs, engineers, consultants and more to come together to discuss the topics most important to those building green in Europe.
This year, seven members of the EnviroSustain team made the long trip by bus, train, and metro from Germany through France to Spain. Our Marketing Director, Sam along with Russ and Tim from our marketing agency, Avery & Brown also made the trip from the UK.
ES has been working with US Green Building Council (USGBC) for over ten years now, and together with GBCI Europe acts as support for delivering LEED in Europe.
Ingemar Hunold, Partner at ES who works closely with both organisations said
I think it’s important as part of the team who develops and delivers LEED for the European market, to share our learnings and key areas of development with the people who are on the ground using it daily. Also, it’s great to collectively be reminded of the importance and the ‘why’ of working to make buildings more sustainable and less of a drain on the planet and its resources and discuss how we are going to get there.
On the first day, we got an introduction to LEED in Europe and heard from Ingemar, Chris Pyke, USGBC and Michelle Schwarting, GBCI Europe about overlaps and differences between LEED and EU regulations including the EU Taxonomy. You can read our jointly published paper here.
Photography by Miriam Nunez. GBCI Europe Circle 2023
The theme for day two was ‘to neutrality and beyond’ and sessions were designed to explore Europe’s race to carbon neutrality and a “positive” future for our built environment. The main conference on day two started with a great keynote presentation by Antoni Ballabriga, Global Head of Responsible Business, BBVA. He spoke passionately about the necessity to integrate sustainability into the financial world and the sheer potential it would generate, with $275Tr of worldwide investment needed to limit global warming below 2 °C between now and 2050.
Presentations around investment, materials, acceleration, scale, and the vision for ‘beyond’ followed, everyone leaving the sessions feeling inspired. You can find some of the presentationshere.
Barcelona is and incredible city and has 272 LEED projects accounting for nearly 1.5 million square meters of certified area. During our time at the event, we got to see 14 stand-out projects, including the venues and day three tour stops.
The event was a chance to meet the European LEED Community and do some networking with other experts. It was great to exchange tips with other consultants who also work on LEED regularly. It was a great opportunity to spend some time with the team, do some team building and enjoy the beautiful city of Barcelona.
Aurélie Simon, Senior Consultant
The overriding message of the event was the huge importance that we continue to push forwards and beyond Net Zero. While neutrality is a nice target to have, it is not nearly enough, and we certainly cannot stop there. It makes sense to push for planet positive buildings not only from a financial perspective but to protect people and the planet for the future.
What really stood out to us is the importance of existing buildings in achieving these goals. Rather than tearing down and starting again from scratch by default, we should remember the embodied carbon of a building and its materials and find ways to retrofit or replace to improve their performance before we even consider constructing something new in its place.
And if we must build something new, we have to consider using existing materials and have a proper plan in mind for its life cycle, not just creating the perfect new building that ticks all the boxes.
I’m a LEED Green Associate and focus mainly on Life Cycle Assessments. The event was an opportunity to immerse myself in the topic of sustainable buildings and a great reminder of how a circular approach in the built environment will help us reach to net zero and beyond. It was great to spend a few days in Barcelona. Discovering that regardless of our backgrounds we all face the same challenges and share the same passion for sustainability was very reassuring and leaves us very motivated.
Matías von Bennewitz, Senior Consultant
We are already excited for GBCI Europe Circle 2024 which will be held in Greece. With key feedback from attendees over the past two years, it will be better than ever. In September, we will also attend Greenbuild to celebrate USGBC’s 30th Anniversary and where the World GBC board will convene. You can learn more here.
Header image photography by Miriam Nunez. GBCI Europe Circle 2023