Incremental Innovation in Construction

 The example of concrete

 

Construction of the built environment has an interlocking set of economic, political, legal, and social barriers that make innovating difficult. As long as current technology meets the expectations of clients and users for prices and dominant products, there will be significant market imperfections such as network economies, lumpiness, split incentives, requirements for collective action, and transaction costs that inhibit diffusion of more efficient, advanced technologies. There is also an institutional structure that imposes regulatory hurdles or other policy disadvantages, favours existing technology or discourages new entrants, and a financing system based around incumbents. Educational curricula, career paths, and professional standards use existing technology. And because organizations, people and technical standards are embedded within a production system, the tendency is for technologies to develop along defined trajectories unless or until deflected by a powerful external force.

 

Construction of the built environment is a project-based system of production with complex professional, organizational, contractual and working relationships, and is geographically distributed. Moreover, the context is one of wider networks containing many small and medium size firms with a range of organizational and institutional relationships, where external contracting is common. All these factors are seen as inhibiting, although not preventing, innovation and diffusion of new technology. Within such a system incremental innovation improves industry products and processes without affecting the structure of the system. 

 

In construction, many technical advances have come from materials suppliers or component, plant and equipment manufacturers, who have been responsible for the introduction of new products and equipment, such as excavators, cranes, facades and lifts, using incremental innovation directed at improving existing products and processes. Across the construction supply chain firms don’t create new industrial networks to develop or exploit new technologies such as lifts and elevators, glass facades, and interior wall systems, instead these firms become part of the existing network, which is the modern construction production system. As a well-developed industrial system many of its sub-markets are expected to be concentrated and oligopolistic, with a few large, well-established firms exactly like those economic historian Joseph Schumpeter suggested would be most likely to engage in R&D, invention and innovation.

 

The process where inventions are developed, tested and extended, and finally put into production is one of incremental innovation. Firms refine specific parts of a production system, usually in response to something changing elsewhere in the system as production and distribution methods evolve over time, step by step. Although this form of innovation is incremental, it should not be dismissed as unimportant. Examples are the increase since 1950 of mining truck loads from 4 to 400 tonnes and the increase in lifting capacity of tower cranes to over 1,000 tonnes. Another example is the development of computer-aided design (CAD) software, which went on for two decades before Autodesk was started in 1982, one year after the first IBM PC. Over the decades Building information models (BIM) have advanced through 2D and 3D versions to the 4D (schedule) and 5D (cost) iterations today. Now software linked to cameras on helmets or drones can provide real time augmented reality (AR) images from a building site linked to the BIM model of the project.

 

Building and construction products and processes are the outcome of a long development path. Many of the industry’s global leaders are well-established, Bechtel for example is over 100 years old, and other firms like Hochtief, Skanska, and AECOM can trace their origin stories back over a similar period. Shimizu is over 200 years old. Most of today’s manufacturers also have their roots in nineteenth century firms. It’s a remarkable fact that construction today is a production system that has been developing for more than 150 years, since the arrival of steam, steel and concrete, using incremental innovation to gradually improve products and processes. 

 

In the industry life cycle, after emergence and the initial growth stage, technology stabilises around standardised products and processes. In many cases industries are oligopolistic, with a few specialized firms in market niches or layers in the supply chain. Consolidation leads to industry concentration with large firms dominating their markets, the car industry is an example. Construction materials like cement, concrete and glass, and components like building management systems, interior walls, plumbing fixtures, lifts and elevators are all oligopolistic industries in an established supply chain.[i]

 

 

Incremental Innovation: The example of concrete 

 

The development of concrete is an example of how effective incremental innovation in construction can be. By the 1880s the increasingly widespread use of concrete had changed its status from hobby to a modern industry, as scientific investigation into its material properties revealed its shear and compressive characteristics. With the development of reinforced concrete there was change in architectural concepts of structures and approaches to building with concrete. The industrial standards of concrete technology influenced ways of thinking based on building systems and standardized building elements. These became identified with what was known as the Hennebique System, a simple to use system of building with reinforced concrete columns and beams patented in 1892. By 1905 Hennebique’s system had spread across Europe and elsewhere and his company employed 380 people in 50 offices with 10,000 workers onsite.[ii]

 

Concrete then set the agenda for the development of construction as a technological system over the next hundred years driven by the modernist movement in architecture, as it explored the possibilities of these material for increasing the height and scale of buildings, and modern construction materials and methods.[iii] For over one hundred years, since Hennebique, there has been ongoing refinement and development of the world’s most widely used construction material, as shown in Table 1.

 

Concrete shows how incremental innovation in materials played a significant role in the reorganization of site production methods as mixers, pumps and chemicals were refined and developed in a long process of interconnected innovations. One of the characteristics of a successful technology are these spillover effects, with advances in one industry leading to complimentary developments in related industries. 

Table 1. Incremental innovation in concrete since 1800

Source: Jahren, P. 2011. Concrete: History and Accounts, Trondheim: Tapir Academic Press.

Innovation is continuing today with 3D concrete printing (3DCP). Research into 3DCP has focused on developing the equipment needed and the materials used, and by 2019[iv] over a dozen experimental prototypes had been built. By 2022 the commercialisation of 3DCP was underway, with two types of systems available. One using a robotic arm to move the print head over a small area, intended to produce structural elements and precast components, the other a gantry system for printing large components, walls and structures. 3DCP combines BIM models, new concrete mixtures and chemicals, and new printing machines. Again, a combination of new materials and new machinery is required for this technology to work.

 

In 2022 the Additive Manufacturing Marketplace had 34 concrete printing machines listed, ranging from desktop printers to large track mounted gantry systems that can print three or four story buildings. Companies making these machines are mainly from the US and Europe, and Table 2 also has details on the type and size of a selection of machines. There are also several companies offering 3DCP as a service at an hourly or daily rate.[v]

 

Concrete printing is only one part of the development of additive manufacturing. In mid-2022 the Additive Manufacturing Marketplace listed 2,372 different 3D printing machines from 1,254 brands. The number of printers and materials used were: 364 metal; 355 photopolymers; 74 ceramic; 61 organic; 34 concrete; 24 clay; 20 silicone; 19 wax; and 19 continuous fibres. Many of these printers could be used to produce fixtures and fittings for buildings. Producing components onsite from bags of mixture avoids the cost of handling and transport, and for large items avoids the load limits on roads and trucks. There are also printing services and additive manufacturing marketplaces being set up. These link designers to producers with the materials science, specialised equipment and print farms capable of large production runs and manufacture on demand. Examples are Dassault Systems 3DExperience, Craft Cloud, Xometry, Shapeways, 3D Metalforge, Stratasys and Materialise.

Table 2. Some companies making 3D concrete printers

Source: Additive Manufacturing Marketplace, 2022. 

 

 

Conclusion

 

Innovating in a complex, long established industrial sector like construction of the built environment can be difficult. The institutional architecture can impose regulatory hurdles or other policy disadvantages on new technologies, and government expenditures often support existing technology. Lenders are risk averse. There are subsidies and price structures that favour incumbents and ignore externalities like the environment and public health. Educational curricula, career paths and professional standards are oriented to existing technology. The dominance of existing technologies is further reinforced by imperfections in the market for technology such as network economies, lumpiness, split incentives and the need for collective action.[vi]

 

The construction industry has become used to incremental innovation and a gradual rate of change since the modern industry emerged over the last few decades of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a great deal of resistance to change: ‘the older assembling industries like engineering were slow to change. Each firm took a proprietary pride in its own work’, and the trades were ‘fearful of technological unemployment and fought all changes in conditions of work.’[vii] Nevertheless, by the 1920s construction had reorganised the system of production around concrete, steel and glass. 

 

We are at a similar point today. The development of digital construction using combinations of BIM, offsite manufacturing, 3DCP, drones and robots, is an emerging new system of production, and the adoption and adaptation of these technologies will depend on incremental innovation continually improving their performance, which can only happen if they are put to use. There is a strong case here for public clients, who will be major beneficiaries of the improved efficiency of digital construction, to sponsor demonstration projects that use these technologies and measure the improvements in waste, carbon, defects, time and cost that are delivered. 

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[i] Syverson, C. 2019. Macroeconomics and Market Power: Context, Implications, and Open Questions, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33, 3, 23–43. Syverson, C. 2008. Markets: Ready-Mixed Concrete, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22, 1, 217–233.

[ii] Pfammatter, U. 2008. Building the Future: Building Technology and Cultural History from the Industrial Revolution until Today. Munich: Prestel Verlag.

[iii] Cody, J. 2003. Exporting American Architecture 1870-2000, London: Routledge. 

Huxtable, A. L. 2008. On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change, New York: Walker Publishing Company.

[iv] Sanjayan, N. and Nematollahi, B. (eds.) 2019. 3D Concrete Printing Technology: Construction and building applications. Butterworth-Heinemann.

[v] https://www.aniwaa.com

[vi] Bloom, N., Van Reenen, J. and Williams, H. 2019. A toolkit of policies to promote innovation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33(3), 163-84.

[vii] Hughes, T. P. 1989: 495. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870-1970, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Construction

 Technological Change and Constructing the Built Environment

I was once attacked by a colleague for, as he put it, ‘not considering the great mass of people employed in construction’. We were working for a government inquiry into collusive tendering and discussing recommendations to improve productivity and efficiency in the final report. At the time there were significant changes affecting the Australian industry that had far more impact than the legislative and regulatory reforms the inquiry led to. The industrial relations system was moving from a centralised award based one to a more decentralised system with enterprise bargaining and site agreements. International contractors were entering the market and the larger engineering and architecture practices consolidating. As the industry began to recover from a speculative office building bubble and the economy rebounded from a deep recession, construction employment increased and continued to grow for the next few decades. Construction as used here refers to all the firms and organizations involved in design, construction, repair and maintenance of the built environment.

 

Where these longer run trends were going was not obvious at the time. There have been significant changes in the range of activities and types of firms involved in construction of the built environment over the last few decades. Two trends underpinning those changes were the increasing use of multi-disciplinary project teams as the boundaries between professional disciplines became less distinct, and the inhouse versus outsourced decision about provision more common. Facilities management is an example, an activity that used to be done internally but is now often outsourced, sometimes but not always to construction contractors. Consultants bid for work as contractors, and contractors do consultancy and project management. Urban planning was once primarily associated with design, but is now linked to real estate and development. The process of structural change in industry occurs as technology, institutional and firm capabilities develop and change over decades.

Figure 1.

When considering the relationship between construction of the built environment and technological change the past is really the only guide available, so the starting point for this discussion is the first industrial revolution in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century when modern construction and its distinctive culture began to form, followed by the twentieth century’s attempts to industrialise construction. This history is important because, after more than 200 years of development, construction of the built environment happens today within an established system of production based on a complex framework of rules, regulations, institutions, traditions and habits that have evolved over this long period of time.

 

But how useful is history and how can it be used? Are there appropriate historical examples or cases to study to see if there are lessons relevant to the present? The answers depend to a large extent on context, because a key characteristic of the history of technology is the importance of institutions and the political and social context of economic outcomes. Also, understanding how policies were developed in the past and how effective they were requires understanding the changing context of policy implementation. However, as economist Paul Samuelson pointed out ‘history doesn't tell its own story and ‘conjectures based on theory and testing against data’ are needed to uncover it. Drawing the right lessons from history is a nuanced exercise. 

 

Over time industries and products evolve and develop as their underlying knowledge base and technological capabilities increase. The starting point for a cycle of development is typically a major new invention, something that is significant enough to lead to fundamental changes in demand (the function, type and number of buildings), design (the opportunities new materials offer), or delivery (through project management). Major inventions give a ‘technological shock’ to an existing system of production, which leads to a transition period where incumbent firms have to adjust to the new business environment and new entrants appear to take advantage of the new technology. Economist Joseph Schumpeter called this process creative destruction, and it leads to the restructuring and eventually consolidation of industries. That is what happened to construction and related suppliers of professional services, materials and components after the first industrial revolution. 

 

The drivers of development for industries in the twenty-first century are emerging technologies such as augmented reality, nanotechnology, machine intelligence, digital fabrication, robotics, automation, exoskeletons and possibly human augmentation. Collectively, these digital technologies are described as a fourth industrial revolution, and their capabilities can be expected to significantly improve as new applications and programs emerge with the development of intelligent machines trained in specific tasks. Innovation and technological change is pushing against what are now long-established customs and practices of the industries in the diverse value chain that designs and delivers the projects that become the built environment.

 

How technological change affects these industries differs from more widely studied industries like computers, automobiles or aerospace because of the number and diversity of firms involved in designing, constructing and managing the built environment. With the range of separate industries these firms come from, construction of the built environment is the output of a broad industrial sector made up of over a dozen individual industries. Not an ‘industry’ narrowly defined, but a broad industrial sector that is organised into a system of production with distinctive characteristics. A second difference is the age of these industries, many of which are mature industries in late stages of their life cycle. These differences create a different context for questions about industry, innovation and technological change, about how firms compete and how the system of production is organised as fourth industrial revolution technologies like digital twins and drones spread through construction and the pace of digitization increases. 

 

As well as the contractors, subcontractors and suppliers for new builds, there are also many firms and people mainly engaged in the alteration, repair and maintenance of the built environment. The broad base of small firms is a distinctive feature of construction, and these family-owned firms engaged in repair and maintenance work will largely continue to use the materials and processes they are familiar with. Old technologies can survive long after the innovations that eventually replace them arrived, such as the telegraph, fax machine and vinyl records with telephones, email and CDs. Stone, tile, brick and wood have been widely used materials for millennia, and industrialized materials like corrugated iron and concrete are ubiquitous. For maintaining and repairing the existing stock of buildings and structures, many of the skills, technologies and materials found today will continue to be used far into the future. That does not mean firms mainly involved in repair and maintenance will not be affected in some way by the fourth industrial revolution. 

Figure 2. 

Construction of the built environment has characteristic organizational and institutional features because it is project-based with complex professional and contractual relationships. How firms utilise technology and develop technological capabilities differentiates them within this location-based system of production. Emerging technologies in design, fabrication and control have the potential to transform construction over the next few decades, possibly less, and the book suggests firms will follow low, medium or high-tech technological trajectories, determined by their investment in the emerging technologies of the fourth industrial revolution. 

 

A broad view of what future construction might look like is based on successful solutions being found for the many institutional and technical problems involved in transferring fourth industrial revolution technologies to construction. Without downplaying the difficulty of those problems, similar challenges have been met in the past, but those solutions led in turn to a reorganization of the system of production. 

 

There are very many possible futures that could unfold over the next few decades as technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), automation and robotics develop. However, the key technology underpinning these further developments is intelligent machines operating in a connected but parallel digital world with varying degrees of autonomy. These are machines that have been trained to use data in specific but limited ways, turning data into information to interact with each other and work with humans. The tools, techniques and data sets needed for machine learning are becoming more accessible for experiment and model building, and new products like generative design for buildings plans, drone monitoring of onsite work and 3D concrete printers are available.

 

Intelligent machines are moving from controlled environments, like car manufacturing or social media, to unpredictable environments, like driving a truck. In many cases, like remote trucks and trains on mining sites, the operations are run as a partnership between humans and machines. There are also autonomous machines like autopilots in aircraft and the Mars rovers. As well as rapid development of machine intelligence, technological change in the form of new materials, new production processes and organizational systems is also happening. Sensors and scanners are widely used, 3D concrete printing is no longer experimental, cloud-based digital twins are available as a service, and online platforms coordinate design, manufacture and delivery of building components using digital twins. 

 

A period of restructuring of construction occurred in the second half of the 1800s when the new industrial materials of glass, steel and reinforced concrete arrived, bringing with them new business models, new entrants and an expanded range of possibilities. The development of modern construction was not, however, a smooth upward path of progress and betterment. It went in fits and starts as new inventions and innovations arrived, slowly then quickly, often against critics of the modern system of production and workers, fearing technological unemployment and lack of government support during a time of technological transition, who resisted new technology and sometimes sabotaged equipment. The issue in the past, like today, was in fact not the availability of jobs but the quality of skills during the diffusion of new technologies through industry. 

 

The only previous comparable period of disruptive technological change in construction of the built environment is the second half of the nineteenth century. Between 1850 and 1900 construction saw the rise of large, international contractors, who reorganized project management and delivery around steam powered machinery and equipment. In particular, the disruptive new technologies of steel, glass and concrete, which came together in the last decades of the century, led to fundamental changes in both processes and products. If that is any guide, we can expect technological changes to operate today over the same three areas of industrialization of production, mechanization of work, and organization of projects that they did then. And today, just as in 1820 when no-one knew how different construction would be and what industry would look like in 1900, we can’t see construction in 2100. That is a long way out, and we can only guess at the level of future technology. We can, however, use what we already know from both history and the present to form a view of what is possible over the next few decades based on what is currently understood to be technologically feasible.

It should be clear that the role of fourth industrial revolution technologies will be to augment human labour in construction of the built environment, not replace it. Generative design software does not replace architects or engineers. Optimization of logistics or maintenance by AI does not replace mechanics. Onsite construction is a project-based activity using standardized components to deliver a specific building or structure in a specific location. The nature of a construction site means automated machinery and equipment will have to be constantly monitored and managed by people, with many of their current skills still relevant but applied in a different way. Nevertheless, in the various forms that building information models, digital twins, AI, 3D printing, digital fabrication and procurement platforms take on their way to the construction site, they will become central to many of the tasks and activities involved. Education and training pathways and industry policies with incentives for labour-friendly technology will be needed.

Figure 3.

 

Because construction involves so many firms and people the technology driven changes discussed here will have significant and profound economic and social consequences. This would be a good opportunity for government and industry to work together to develop policies and roadmaps for those firms, and to support ‘the great mass of people’ employed in construction of the built environment who will be affected by them. The future is not determined, although technological change and creative destruction continue to reshape and restructure industry and the economy, decisions made today create the future.

 

 

From the Introduction to my new book available from Amazon on technological change and construction. 

Building Standards, Energy Codes and Decarbonisation

Building Standards and Codes

 

The regular revision and upgrading of building codes and product standards is a policy area where governments, usually through regulatory agencies, have influenced and directed industry development. The use of building codes to influence industry development has a long history with some notable successes, because buildings are designed and delivered in conformance with those regulations. The building code of 1676 for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666 classified buildings into types with specified materials and levied fees that paid for inspections. A new building code in 1844 included regulations for height, area, and occupancy of buildings.

 

Standards and codes establish allowable tolerances and how much variation is allowed for products and processes. They underpin quality control and are the basis of inspections to verify work being done, so a standard is a document structured around requirements for conformity and measures that certify meeting those requirements. During the late nineteenth century governments and insurers began raising the standards they set in building codes for access, light, safety, amenity and appearance, significantly improving the design and construction of buildings.[i]

 

The first standard was agreed in Paris for the International System of Electrical and Magnetic Units in 1881, and the International Electrotechnical Commission was established in 1906 to develop and distribute standards for the units of measurement used today. The British Standards Institution was founded in 1901, as were French and German institutes. In the US the Underwriters Laboratory was founded in 1894 by William Merrill, an electrical engineer, to provide testing of building materials for insurers, and the 1897 National Electrical Code on electrical wiring and equipment installation was the first US modern code. Insurers led the way in developing standards and methods for fireproofing the steel framed buildings that were becoming common, issuing a model building code in 1905 to reduce fire risk. Also in the US, the American Society for Testing Materials goes back to 1898 with their standard for the steel used to fabricate railway tracks. In 1902 it became the American Section of the International Association for Testing Materials, which eventually became the International Organization for Standards (ISO) in 1947. The American National Standards Institute was formed in 1918. 

 

The ISO now has more than 22,000 different standards covering every aspect of organization management and production control. National testing and standards institutes are members of the ISO, they meet annually to review programs, and countries fund it in proportion to their trade and GDP. There is a six stage process for getting a standard published, typically based on research from the member institutes, and each standard has a guide for developing and maintaining it. Multiple standards are being combined to make them easier to manage.[ii] Although agreeing new standards is a lengthy process, they are universally accepted and applied because of the rigorous scientific and engineering research they are based on. Therefore, an important element in a strategy to increase innovation in construction of the built environment is to increase funding for testing laboratories. 

 

Building characteristics like materials, access, ventilation and fire safety are regulated by standards and codes. The International Code Council produces a series of model International Building Codes that are widely used.[iii]Accreditation for standards like quality control, project management and digital twins for contractors are often required by clients. The performance of the built environment is to a large degree measured against the baselines set by standards for health and safety, energy and environmental management, and process control. When natural disasters like earthquakes, floods and hurricanes reveal shortcomings in existing standards, they lead to new standards and building code revisions.[iv] The higher standards improve resilience and drive improvements in the performance of buildings and structures. This is seen when rebuilding after fires with more fire resistant buildings due to code changes, or after earthquakes with updated standards and more durable designs. Seismic code provisions first appeared in Italy and Japan in the early twentieth century, and in the US in 1927.

 

Building codes establish a baseline for quality and performance. They protect buildings and people from collapse, fire, wind and other extreme events. They regulate structural integrity, electrical, plumbing and mechanical systems and safety, accessibility and energy efficiency. Codes thus underpin the work of architects, engineers, contractors and developers. Architects and engineers must ensure their building designs meet or exceed minimum code requirements Local authorities review plans before construction and issue permits. Inspectors verify the project is compliant. 

 

Through revisions to building standards and codes innovations and new products are introduced in an incremental but typically slow process. While that reduces risk for designers and contractors, it also affects the rate of built environment product innovation and improved building performance. Revisions can be opposed or delayed, for example by residential builders worried about increased costs in a price sensitive market or by product manufacturers protecting market share. Nevertheless, a regular review and update process like the US three year cycle for building codes keeps them relevant and focused on the key issues of building quality, energy use and embodied carbon emissions from construction of the built environment.[v]

 

 

Built Environment Decarbonization

 

The role of building standards and codes in decarbonization,[vi] reducing energy use and cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is well known.[vii] A carbon budget for both the construction[viii] and operation[ix] of the built environment is required. The UN produces an annual Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction that says: ‘Cutting building-related emissions by improving energy efficiency is a crucial aspect of meeting net zero by 2050 climate change goals. Building energy codes provide a tool for governments to mandate the construction and maintenance of low-energy buildings.’[x]

 

To do this, the energy use of buildings must be monitored and managed, and buildings must be built and retrofitted to use less energy, and a global standard for determining greenhouse gas emissions for cities is under development.[xi] There are many startups in building energy management. Although many countries, particularly in Africa, have not yet got compulsory energy codes, countries with codes have been moving toward electrification of building operations, particularly for heating and cooking. This is a necessary requirement to reach net zero by 2050 because residential energy use accounts for around 40 precent of total emissions.

 

The EU is committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.[xii] EU countries’ national climate plans outline how a country intends to address energy efficiency, renewables and GHG emission reduction and meet EU targets. The Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), the framework for energy-efficiency policy in the EU, was established in 2012 with a 20 precent energy-efficiency target by 2020 and revised in 2018 with a 32.5 percent non-binding energy-efficiency target for 2030, with an increase to 39 percent proposed. The EED also targets government buildings, requiring renovation of 3 percent of the floor buildings owned and occupied in line to minimum energy-performance requirements. 

 

Legislation is based on the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD). The 2018 amendments aim for full decarbonization of Europe’s building stock by 2050 while focusing on how to modernize the existing stock. The EPBD requires Member States to develop national long-term renovation strategies, outlining how a country aims to decarbonize the building stock by 2050. To reach the ‘2030 climate target of reducing GHG emissions by at least 55% compared to 1990, and climate neutrality by 2050, the EU must significantly increase its rate and depth of renovation, reduce GHG emissions from buildings by 60% compared to 2015, and by 2030 increase the deep renovation rate to 3% annually, up from the current 0.2%’.[xiii]

 

There is no national energy code in the US, where state, county and city authorities all play a role in setting standards and codes. Model energy codes are developed through the International Code Council and the American Society for Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). Residential and commercial buildings typically reference a version of the International Energy Conservation Code, but California and Washington have their own codes. Codes are typically decided at local or municipal level, then adopted by the state. New York City will phase-out fossil fuel combustion in new buildings from 2024, as will San Francisco and more than 40 other cities in the Bay Area. 

 

More than three-dozen US cities have benchmarking policies where owners report energy data annually to local government. Some also have building labelling, which requires owners to display an energy score or ranking based on benchmarked data.[xiv] Building performance standards set energy or emissions targets using a range of metrics, including energy intensity, GHG emissions intensity, or third-party scoring (like an Energy Star rating) for existing buildings. They get stricter over time, and as well as metrics and a target they include a plan of steps to be taken to reach the target. In 2022 eight US jurisdictions have implemented them. The graph below shows how improvements to the ASHRAE energy code are expected to close the gap to the 2030 target. 

  

Figure 1. Energy efficiency and ASHRAE codes

Source: Institute for Market Transformation, 2022. Mapping US energy policy on energy efficiency in buildings[xv]

 

 

In many other countries sub-national local or regional authorities have been leading on climate change, for example in Australia the Federal Government’s reduction 26 percent target for 2030 greenhouse gas emissions is significantly lower than the State Governments’ 50 percent target. California is another example. It was the first US state to introduce an energy code in 1978, with the three year review and update cycle used in the US. Major updates included electric vehicle charging measures in 2015 and a rooftop solar mandate in 2020. California’s 2022 building code update is considering all-electric construction, meaning buildings must use electric heating and cooking appliances, with no option to use gas.[xvi]New York City in 2016 required benchmarking of energy and water use and from 2020 buildings had to display their grades (from A to F) in their entrance, based on the US Energy Star system.[xvii]

 

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[i] Pfammatter, U. 2008. Building the Future: Building Technology and Cultural History from the Industrial Revolution until Today. Munich: Prestel Verlag. Davis, H. 2006. The Culture of Building, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

[ii] For details and a history of the ISO, and for several standards, see Rich, N. and Malik, N. 2019. International Standards for Design and Manufacturing: Quality Management and International Best Practice, London: Kogan Page. 

[iii] https://codes.iccsafe.org

[iv] Miao and Popp studied innovative responses to three natural disasters: earthquakes, flooding, and drought. Based on the frequency and location of natural disasters and a panel of patent data from 1974-2009, they find that a billion dollars of damage in a country from natural disasters increased innovation by 18 to 39 percent. Miao, Q. and D. Popp. 2014. Necessity as the Mother of Invention: Innovative Responses to Natural Disasters. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 68(2): 280- 295. 

[v] The effectiveness of standards encouraging the use and diffusion of environmental technologies like renewable energy and energy efficiency are reviewed by Vollebergh, H.R.J. and E. van der Werf. 2014. The Role of Standards in Eco-Innovation: Lessons for Policymakers. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy. 8: 230–248. 

[vi] On the importance of sustainability and the contribution construction economics can make to decarbonization see Myers, D. 2017. Construction Economics: A new approach, 4th Ed. London: Spon Press.

[vii] For a comprehensive review see Popp, D. 2019. Environmental Policy and Innovation: A Decade of Research. CESifo Working Paper No. 7544 (on SSRN). This updates the earlier review: Popp, D., R. Newell and A.B. Jaffe 2010. Energy, the Environment, and Technological Change. In Handbook of the Economics of Innovation: vol. 2, Hall, B. and Rosenberg, N. (eds.), Academic Press/Elsevier, 873-937. 

[viii] Armstrong, A., Wright, C., Ashe, B., and Nielsen, H. 2017. Enabling Innovation in Building Sustainability: Australia's National Construction Code, Procedia Engineering, Volume 180, 320-330.

[ix] Leibwicz, B. D. 2017. Effects of urban land-use regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, Cities, 70, 135-152. 

[x] United Nations Environment Programme. 2021: 59. Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction: Towards a Zero-emission, Efficient and Resilient Buildings and Construction Sector. Nairobi https://globalabc.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/GABC_Buildings-GSR-2021_BOOK.pdf

[xi] https://www.citiesalliance.org/draft-international-standard-determining-greenhouse-gas-emissions-cities

[xii] In Europe national building codes set energy requirements to induce innovation. One study found positive effects from policies to improve energy efficiency in new residential buildings, such as energy-efficient boilers and improved insulation, lighting and materials. Prices were found to have an effect on innovation for visible technologies such as boilers and lighting, but not for less-visible technologies such as insulation that are installed by builder. Noailly, J. 2012. Improving the Energy Efficiency of Buildings: The Impact of Environmental Policy on Technological Innovation. Energy Economics. 34: 795-806.

[xiii] https://www.imt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/SPIPA_EU_rev6_508.pdf. p. 11. 

[xiv] https://www.imt.org/resources/mapping-us-policy-on-energy-efficiency-in-buildings/

[xv] https://www.imt.org/resources/mapping-us-policy-on-energy-efficiency-in-buildings/

[xvi] https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2020/12/02/a-powerful-yet-underused-climate-tool-building-codes/?sh=567e3d0ed978

[xvii]https://www.energystar.gov/buildings/benchmark/understand_metrics/how_score_calculated