The German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) has streamlined its certification process for new buildings. According to the DGNB, the administrative burden for planners and building owners is to be reduced without lowering the substantive requirements for energy efficiency, material life cycle assessment, or hazard avoidance. The simplification aims to encourage more projects to pursue voluntary sustainability certification – to date, the DGNB certification rate for new buildings is significantly below ten percent. It remains unclear whether the streamlining also affects the evaluation of EPDs or the documentation of recyclability, two areas that have so far been considered particularly time-consuming.
This article was created with AI assistance and editorially reviewed.
