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The AEC industry is evolving rapidly. Bio-based and natural materials are re-entering mainstream construction with improved performance, while life-cycle assessment and stricter regulations are making the environmental impact of materials increasingly visible and measurable.
This growing attention is no coincidence. Buildings and construction account for roughly a third of global energy-related CO₂ emissions, and as operational energy improves, embodied carbon in materials is becoming the next critical frontier. Across Europe, climate targets and updated building standards already reflect this shift.
So what is still missing for low-carbon materials to become the baseline rather than a checklist?
Drawing on insights from revalu’s archive of interviews, we revisited conversations with 17 architects, researchers, and sustainability leaders to explore a question that is increasingly about pace as much as possibility: Can low-carbon materials become the standard by 2030? Their perspectives reveal four forces shaping the transition—the rules, the economy, the mindset, and the ecosystem.
Regulations, data, and public policies are frequently cited as key drivers for accelerating the transition to low-carbon materials.
For Katrine Juul, lead sustainability architect at Henning Larsen, current carbon limits are only a first step; they must become progressively stricter to achieve real change. She also points to the need for clearer regulations, standardized LCA methods, and more transparent EPD data to make projects comparable: “I want the building industry to have declarations on all building materials, just like we have for food and cosmetics. I want us to know what our buildings are made of.”
But regulations can also create barriers for emerging materials. Armor Gutiérrez Rivas, associate at the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of East London, argues that without political and institutional change bio-based materials will struggle to scale, as building codes often restrict emerging biomaterials: “Unless political or institutional levels change, the construction industry will never change. We need rules that require at least a percentage of materials in buildings to use biogenic materials, or materials sourced from specific production levels or regions.”
Elizabeth Gilligan, founder and CEO of Material Evolution, similarly notes that current standards often limit innovation by prescribing which materials can be used rather than how they perform. A shift toward performance-based standards could unlock new low-carbon materials: “It shouldn’t be about prescribing what the ‘cake’ is made of. We should be asking instead: what does it do, and how does it perform?”
For others, the economy itself is slowing the transition, as the current system prioritises short-term financial returns over long-term environmental value.
Tore Banke, head of impact at Tredje Natur, thinks that the biggest barrier lies in how the financial system rewards environmental harm while failing to recognise positive impact. As long as long-term damage carries no cost and sustainable decisions bring little financial return, the transition will remain slow: “You are not paying for the harm that you cause in the long term and you are not being credited for the good that you do.”
A similar view comes from Ditte Lysgaard Vind, chief innovation & science officer at BLOXHUB, who points to the financialisation of the built environment as a key barrier. When buildings are treated primarily as assets, short-term returns tend to outweigh long-term social and environmental value: “The purpose of the built environment today is to be a good investment.”
Others point to financial mechanisms as part of the solution. Christina Haupt Toft, founder of Circle, suggests that banks, insurers, and investors could accelerate the transition by reducing the risks associated with new materials and rewarding assets that contribute positively to the environment: “Financial institutions can serve as a crucial mechanism in changing business behaviours.”
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Beyond politics and economics, several interviewees point to a deeper barrier: mindset.
Frank Jensen, chairman of family-owned company Søren Jensen Consulting Engineers, believes the biggest barrier may not be technical but how projects are approached in the first place. Too often the industry waits for legislators to act, even though many standards were shaped by the sector itself: “The challenge lies in whether we, as an industry, have the courage to change.”
Others suggest the barrier is cultural. Jan Boelen, a design curator and researcher, describes a broader creative crisis, noting that the construction industry often relies on familiar materials and methods, making it difficult to imagine alternatives even when they already exist: “The biggest problem we have today is that we are in a crisis of imagination.” Paloma Gormley, founding partner at Material Cultures, also notes that these barriers stem from more than a century of prioritising industrial technologies over vernacular knowledge and bioregional materials: “Entire knowledge systems have been lost in the pursuit of modernism. We are trying to find a way towards a different kind of value system—one rooted in care.”
From a more radical perspective, others suggest the shift must go further. Jacob Blak Henriksen, head of resilience at COBE, believes the biggest challenge lies in reducing the overall scale of construction and making better use of existing buildings: “Building less is the only solution we really have.” Jakob Strømann-Andersen, director of innovation and partner at Henning Larsen, echoes this view: “The most sustainable thing is not to build.”
Several interviewees emphasize that the transition depends not only on new materials but also on stronger collaboration across the industry, allowing ideas and materials to translate more easily from research into practice.
For Kåre Stokholm Poulsgaard, partner at 3XN and GXN Innovation, one of the biggest barriers lies in the industry’s knowledge gap. Many low-carbon solutions already exist, but the knowledge gained from using them often remains siloed within individual teams and projects, making it difficult to assess risks or scale them across the industry: “People don’t kill ideas off because they don’t like biogenic materials or low-carbon solutions. They kill ideas off because they seem too risky, tricky, or straight-up unknown to handle.”
Others point to the need for stronger knowledge-sharing systems. Maximilian Vomhof, co-founder of open-source building knowledge initiatives, notes that expertise often remains locked within individual organisations, slowing collective learning: “We need to learn to build upon the knowledge of others, quite literally.” Irene García, head of built environment at CNCA, similarly emphasises the importance of reliable data and shared methodologies to establish realistic climate targets: “If you don’t know where you stand today, you cannot determine a realistic target for tomorrow.”
Beyond knowledge systems, others highlight the need to rebuild the value chains that sustain these materials. Chrissie Muhr, co-managing director and artistic director of the Experimental Foundation, notes that the transition cannot rely simply on replacing one material with another, but requires collaboration between architects, manufacturers, researchers, and cultural actors: “It is not just about having another material decision and change, but to understand, initiate and reactivate value chains.” Along similar lines, Gordon Selbach and Jakob Travnik, founding partners at bioregional.agency, highlight the importance of building bioregional networks where practices, projects, and materials can learn from one another: “Industry should be more open, collaborative, and re-localized so innovative bioregional materials can move beyond prototypes.”
These conversations do not produce a single answer, but they reveal a clear pattern. The transition to low-carbon materials will not depend on a single breakthrough, but on several shifts already underway across Europe: clearer regulation, economic incentives that reflect long-term environmental value, a cultural shift in how sustainability is understood—from building more efficiently to rethinking how we inhabit the future—and stronger ecosystems where knowledge, data, and value chains align.
With 2030 fast approaching, making low-carbon materials the norm will depend less on technological innovation than on the industry’s ability to coordinate these shifts and translate environmental ambition into everyday design and construction decisions.
If alignment is the challenge, platforms like revalu support this transition by centralizing verified material information and technical data, creating a shared source of truth that reduces fragmentation and helps teams make material decisions with confidence and ease.
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