On October 3, EBC attended the Built4People Stakeholders Forum, organized by its managing partners the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) and World Green Building Council’s (WGBC) Europe Regional Network, together with the European Commission.
The Built4People partnership (B4P) is the co-programmed partnership within Horizon Europe providing a cross-cluster structure, bringing together public and private sectors to create research and innovation pathways based on a holistic view of the built environment for sustainability and better living. B4P’s ambition is to catalyse the transition to a people-centric, climate-neutral, sustainable, and smart built environment that will meet the objectives of the European Green Deal, sustain the ambitious objectives of the Renovation Wave, and align with the bold aims of the New European Bauhaus.
After the opening remarks, ECTP and WGBC, outlined the state-of-play and the achievements of the Horizon Europe – B4P Partnership.
Participants had then the chance to exchange views during four different breakout sessions and dive into some hot topics on the EU agenda: the path towards a decarbonised and circular Built environment; the importance of an inclusive and affordable housing; the data and information aggregation for a sustainable Built Environment; and a Healthy, equitable, and resilient built environment.
Finally, ECTP and WGBC presented the more recent initiative Built4People Innovation Clusters (B4PIC). These are new groups of innovation-driven stakeholders, such as local and regional clusters or networks, that ambition to increase their coverage (geographical, cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary) and to deploy sustainable innovation in order to help achieve the EU climate targets for Europe’s ageing building stock, which are today lagging behind in the context of the green transition.
If you are interested in learning more about B4PICs, you can find more information here. The first call for applications has been launched and will be open until the end of December 2023.
EBC supports this initiative. As recently stated by EBC Secretary General, Fernando Sigchos Jiménez, in the dedicated B4P press release announcing the B4PICs initiative:
“EBC represents the interests of the building sector’s micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to ensure they can play their part in helping the European Union respond to challenges such as job growth, youth unemployment, digital economy, energy efficiency, circular economy and more – goals that are well aligned with the Built4People Partnership. We welcome the formation of this new network of innovation clusters for the opportunity it offers construction SMEs to get closer to the innovation community, to generate ever more useful synergies to meet the challenge of massive renovation of Europe’s built environment and buildings.”
 | For more information, visit www.built4people.eu |