ABSTRACT
The growing and unsustainable use of resources causes direct and indirect environmental problems such as climate change, soil degradation, land consumption, water shortage or biodiversity loss. Efforts to reduce resource consumption reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus contribute indirectly to climate protection.
At present, German policymakers are increasingly focusing on resource efficiency. This approach alone will not lead to fair use of resources within the planetary boundaries. Beyond that, measurements of life-cycle-wide resource use, especially for buildings and other very long-lived goods, raise assessment problems of end-of-life phases far in the future or credits or debits outside the system boundaries.
Instruments have to be developed to reduce resource consumption in a timely manner. The introduction of the label Resource Score is a corresponding instrument with a far-reaching control function. It shows the lifecycle-wide utilisation of essential resources.
The label takes into account reasonable limits to the assessment of recycling or other recovery of building materials after the life of buildings, which are almost far in the future. The Resource Score awards buildings with low CO2 equivalents emissions, primary energy and cumulative abiotic raw material consumption from building materials during service life of 50 years.
