The revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) demands EU member states to introduce measures addressing the whole-life carbon (WLC) impact of buildings, encompassing both operational emissions and embodied emissions across the production, construction, renovation, and end-of-life stages. Implementing these measures requires extensive structural transformations, posing challenges for countries that are institutionally unfamiliar with the concept, such as Romania.
An effective implementation of WLC requires a multidisciplinary and integrated approach to building decarbonisation, combining technology innovation, economic strategy, and adapted legislation. Likewise, it requires collaboration and coordination between a variety of actors in the buildings sector that play key roles in the stages of the building lifecycle and the wider ecosystem of sustainable construction.
Barriers that may impede the effective application of the WLC approach in Romania’s construction sector, along with proposed solutions to each, are categorised as technological, economic, legislative and regulatory, and cultural and public perception-based, with each set of barriers and solutions distributed across different stages of the building lifecycle.
Some of the most salient recommendations to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices in the building sector are:
- establishing a strong regulatory framework and standards for sustainable, local construction materials as well as secondary, recycled materials, alongside expanding the recycling infrastructure.
- driving investment and demand in sustainable constructions through instruments such as tax reductions.
- prioritising renovation over new builds.
- strengthening building stock databases.
- conducting awareness and education campaigns to raise awareness of the WLC principles and the significance of addressing life-cycle emissions in buildings

Radu Dudău, EPG Co-founder & President
Radu Dudău is President and co-founder of EPG. He was, from 2007 to 2023, an Associate Professor at the Bucharest University. From 2006 to 2010 he was Deputy Director at the Romanian Diplomatic Institute (Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
He graduated in Physics and Philosophy from the University of Iași. He holds a Dr. Phil. degree in Philosophy (magna cum laude) from Konstanz University (Germany) and a PhD in Political Science (International Relations) (summa cum laude) from the National School of Political and Administrative Studies (SNSPA, Bucharest).
He was a Fulbright Fellow with the National Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School of Government (2011), a New Europe College Fellow at the Danish Institute of International Relations (Copenhagen, 2006) and an OSI/FCO-Chevening scholar at Oxford University (1999-2000).
His work focuses on energy policy, energy technology, and energy markets.
Contact: radu.dudau@enpg.ro