Are Green Buildings an Indicator of Sustainable Development?

Abstract

The world’s population keeps growing together with the construction rate of buildings that need to reduce their environmental footprint in order to mitigate global warming. This paper analyses if the spread of green buildings can be used as an indicator of broader sustainable development. The study is carried out with data taken from Eurostat Database and green buildings directories for 27 EU countries in the 10-year period spanning from 2010 to 2019. The relationship between the indicators is examined through simple linear regressions, and the results confirm the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis: in developed countries, a growing economy (more GDP) is related to an environmental improvement (fewer GHG emissions). In addition, this study proves that the variance of green buildings expresses with a consistent probability the variance of GDP per capita (p-value = 0.0004 and R2 = 0.8475) and the variance of GHG emissions (p-value = 0.0002 and R2 = 0.8825), meaning that green buildings are indeed an indicator of sustainable development. This is due to the upfront cost required to implement advanced construction technologies that ultimately cut GHG emissions during the building lifecycle. This also points out that policy makers should encourage green building implementation through tax relieves and grants.