Source: The VELUX Group (2026), The Housing We Need for the Future We Want-Green Paper. Cover. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
We first learned about this paper thanks to Jorge López Conde, through a LinkedIn post he shared on September 4.
Through this same network, MarÃa José has already expressed to him that there are simply not enough words to convey how grateful we are for the opportunity to have access to more than 88 pages of research that EHC can now explore in greater depth.
This paper reinforces a message that EHC has been advocating for years and points towards a profound shift in direction: before continuing to build, we need to look at and make better use of what we have already built.
The study provides highly valuable data with the potential to make a significant impact both on addressing the housing crisis and on protecting the environment.
Many years ago, MarÃa José read Factfulness and was so struck by its ability to put data and reality at the centre of the conversation that she went on to give the book as a gift on more than 50 occasions.
We hope that, once again, the reality revealed by the data will help us address the transformation of the multiple crises we are currently facing.
The paper identifies four interconnected crises. From EHC’s perspective, we believe there may be even more if we consider the full potential of making better use of the residential stock we have already built.
We will continue to explore the paper in greater depth and share our reflections on what we consider to be extremely significant news.
The BPIE (Buildings Performance Institute Europe) paper reinforces a fundamental idea: meeting our housing needs is not simply a matter of building more.
The data speak loud and clear:
• 50–107 million homes could potentially be unlocked across Europe, with the capacity to accommodate up to 246 million people. • 75% of the mitigation potential comes from renovation alone. • 3.9–19 Gt of CO₂ could be avoided over the next 50 years.
Although we will continue to explore the paper and its implications in greater depth, we believe its relevance deserves to be shared from the outset.
The Housing We Need for the Future We Want https://zenodo.org/records/21030392
