Rli recommends building homes for the future: fast, affordable and sustainable

Press release Rli - 19 june 2025

Successive governments have aimed to build 100,000 homes a year. The emphasis is on speed and affordability. In its advisory report 'Building for the future', the Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (Rli) notes that the focus on the sustainability of housing is taking a back seat in this process. This is surprising given the Netherlands’ ambition to become climate neutral by 2050. The Rli warns that if the Netherlands continues to build homes using conventional materials, such as concrete and steel, for too long it will be at risk of a new construction crisis. At the same time, more and more parties are already building homes with sustainable materials: a fact that gives the Rli hope. In its advisory report, the Rli calls on the incoming government to encourage a transition to the use of sustainable materials to ensure that fast and affordable construction remains possible in the near future. The advisory report was received on behalf of Minister of Housing and Spatial Planning Mona Keijzer by Chris Kuijpers, Secretary-General and Director-General for Housing and Building, on June 19.

Significant carbon emissions from the use of materials in housing construction

A proportion of Dutch carbon emissions come from the use of conventional materials to build homes. This accounts for around 5% of Dutch emissions. A rapid transition to the use of climate-friendly materials such as wood, bio-based insulation materials and more sustainable concrete is needed to meet the climate targets to which the government has signed up.

Financiers and the EU are calling for climate-neutral housing construction

The transition to building homes with sustainable building materials is unavoidable given the growing demand for such housing from both corporate and private investors. Moreover, the Netherlands has agreed in an EU context to set limits on carbon emissions from new housing with effect from 2030. To this end, EU Member States are required to draw up a roadmap that sets out limit values and targets for carbon emissions throughout the lifespan of homes. The ambition is to achieve zero emissions by 2050. It is important that the construction chain quickly learns to build with sustainable materials in order to meet the limit values and targets, which will become stricter over time, to avoid a construction crisis after 2030.

Demand for homes made of sustainable materials needs to increase

A number of parties in the construction chain are already taking surprisingly big steps towards sustainable housing construction. These parties are demonstrating that it is already possible to build with sustainable materials and, contrary to the prevailing mantra, this can also be done faster and at affordable costs. Despite this promising development, a larger number of parties are still awaiting further government direction. The result is insufficient demand for sustainable building materials, which means that the production of these materials cannot benefit from upscaling advantages currently reserved for conventional building materials. In addition, sustainable materials and strategies such as reuse and low-installation building are still disadvantaged to a large extent by existing rules and procedures, which the government needs to update.

Regulation and pricing mechanisms

To get the entire construction chain moving, the Rli calls on central government to provide direction. National government needs to use a combination of regulation and pricing mechanisms to stimulate demand for homes made of sustainable materials. Regulation is needed in the form of a sufficiently ambitious roadmap to focus on reducing the climate impact of housing construction. On top of this, as an additional incentive and to create a level playing field, the Rli recommends that central government introduces a levy on homes that do not meet the targets set out in the roadmap.

Major added bonuses

The transition to building with sustainable materials, which goes hand in hand with opportunities for prefabricated housing construction, also offers a wide range of added bonuses such as reducing geopolitical dependencies, prospects for agriculture, higher labour productivity and better working conditions on the construction site.

Note for editors

To request interviews, please contact the Council’s Communication Officer, Anneke Verschoor, at anneke.verschoor@rli.nl or on +31 (0)6 1535 9540.

For more information about the advisory report, please contact the project leader Bas Waterhout at bas.waterhout@rli.nl or on +31 (0)6 2117 8802.