In January 2021, CNCA launched the “Dramatically Reducing Embodied Carbon in Europe” project, funded by the Laudes Foundation. This is a 3-year project that aims to foster widespread adoption of ambitious local, national and regional policies that will reduce embodied carbon and increase the uptake of bio-based materials in the built environment in Europe.

The project will undertake four main activities:

• Identify and recruit cities poised for ambitious policy development, adoption and implementation, in partnership with Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance members and lead partners in the project.
• Foster the adoption of ambitious embodied carbon and biobased material policies in 10-20 cities through technical support, involvement of communities, close industry dialogue and peer learning.
• Advocate for national policy adoption to prompt the national level to develop policy that better enables cities to reach their embodied carbon targets and to change regulatory red tape that hampers cities’ embodied carbon work.
• Build a coalition of cities, national-level stakeholders, industry and civil society groups to advocate for EU level policy adoption that enable local and national governments to pursue more ambitious embodied carbon targets.

The Dramatically Reducing Embodied Carbon project meets several priorities of Lille Metropole and contributes to various ongoing strategies, like our Climate Air and Energy plan but also the future local housing and urbans plans and the strategy for circular economy.

Through this project Lille Metropole wishes:

• to progress on the elaboration of a comprehensive territorial ecosystem in the area of construction including the various players involved in the sector (planners, builders, municipalities, economic actors, etc.).
• to boost exchanges of expertise and good practices with other European cities; 
• to be involved in exchanges at national and European level, in terms of evolution of laws and regulation and the definition of the Commission’s programs in this sector, which will in particular facilitate the identification of future calls for projects corresponding to the priorities of Lille Metropole.