Building energy renovation mitigates carbon emissions but often increases material demand and financial costs. This work addresses this problem by investigating the carbon, material, and economic footprints of various renovation scenarios in the Dutch residential sector from 2015 to 2050. Results show that, compared to the baseline, façade refurbishment could lower cumulative lifecycle emissions by up to 0.3%, while raising material use by 21–25% and costs by 2–6%. Sensitivity analysis indicates that refurbishing the heating system offers greater potential for reducing carbon emissions. Rebuilding could cut emissions by up to 17% under an ambitious energy transition, though this would triple material use and construction costs. Circularity strategies could offset up to 89% of the material footprint and reduce carbon emissions by up to 23%. Nonetheless, considerable cost increases from renovations remain inevitable, even with advanced material circulation systems, suggesting circular renovation strategies with enhanced incentives as concerted action.

The authors regret that the original version of this article contained numerical errors in Figure 2 within the main text and Table A1 of Appendix A. Supplementary data. Corrections that need to be made are presented as follows: • For Figure 2 in the main text, the label “0∼4mm SS (42.5%)” of a flow should be corrected to “0∼4mm SS (44.5%)”, as shown in Fig. C1 below. [Figure presented]• In Table A1 of Appendix A, the electricity usage for the “Wet processing” under the S1 BAU WP scenario should be corrected to “400 kWh” instead of “60,000 kWh”.The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused and state that the changes reported do not affect the scientific results and conclusions of the manuscript.

Lack of knowledge and tools hampers circular transition in the construction industry. This study analyzes the potential of a framework of circular indicators put forward by the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM-C) as an answer to the prevailing need of a metric for building circularity assessment to promote circular construction. A qualitative analysis approach is adopted, involving literature review, comparative case study and semi-structured interviews conducted for collecting expert opinions. An in-depth scrutiny of the BREEAM-C indicators revealed that they are rooted in circular principles, cover building circularity realizable through circular strategies, and have given due consideration to circularity in different impact areas, structural layers and life-cycle stages of buildings. Moreover, BREEAM-C indicators not only show capacity in identifying CE-related practices implemented, but also serve as benchmarks testifying that CE principles/strategies are incorporated in the design, construction, operation and management of the buildings. Despite having room for expansion, BREEAM-C has proven to be applicable and practical with potential for use in Taiwan as confirmed by expert opinions. Nevertheless, adaptation/localization is required to cater for different concerns with respect to climate and safety as well as local context and legislations.

Research on the circular built environment has to date focussed mainly on technical aspects of circularity in the built environment, emphasising the development of methods, tools, and frameworks to facilitate technical solutions that can narrow, slow, close, and regenerate materials cycles. Despite progress made in understanding the technical possibilities of circularity in the built environment, and although there has been longstanding acknowledgement that new forms of inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration are needed to accelerate and scale up solutions for the circular built environment, studies have also consistently highlighted the lack of collaboration as a significant barrier. In this position paper, we argue that existing research tends to focus on collaboration at the level of the building project, and this neglect calls for developing longer-term collaboration for circularity as a multi-level transition that considers the interactions between multiple parties involved in extended and multiple product lifecycles traversing multiple scales beyond the building project.

Building stock growth around the world drives extensive material consumption and environmental impacts. Future impacts will be dependent on the level and rate of socioeconomic development, along with material use and supply strategies. Here we evaluate material-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for residential and commercial buildings along with their reduction potentials in 26 global regions by 2060. For a middle-of-the-road baseline scenario, building material-related emissions see an increase of 3.5 to 4.6 Gt CO2eq yr-1 between 2020–2060. Low- and lower-middle-income regions see rapid emission increase from 750 Mt (22% globally) in 2020 and 2.4 Gt (51%) in 2060, while higher-income regions shrink in both absolute and relative terms. Implementing several material efficiency strategies together in a High Efficiency (HE) scenario could almost half the baseline emissions. Yet, even in this scenario, the building material sector would require double its current proportional share of emissions to meet a 1.5 °C-compatible target.