Green Building Certification Spain has become the first body accredited by the National Accreditation Body (ENAC) for inspecting and validating the Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) principle under the international standard UNE-EN ISO/IEC 17029, for its own assessment scheme within the framework of the EU Taxonomy, a regulatory initiative aimed at improving the flow of capital towards sustainable activities throughout the European Union.  Specifically, this is a scheme designed for the construction and real estate development sector, particularly in the areas of new building construction, renovation of existing buildings, and the acquisition and ownership of buildings.

This accreditation also marks a significant milestone in the private sector, as the existing accreditations to date, in the field of validating/inspecting the DNSH principle, were developed in pilot schemes by public administrations or bodies affiliated with them. Therefore, it is a novel accreditation in DNSH inspection/validation, aimed at a high growth potential sector and endowed with international projection.

A pioneering scheme for the construction sector

The scheme’s development was a direct response to a request from the European market in 2021, following the publication of the European Taxonomy, a key EU regulation that defines technical criteria for identifying sustainable economic activities, aimed at guiding investment towards activities aligned with European environmental goals. In the building sector, this regulation imposes specific requirements for new constructions, rehabilitation, and building ownership, focused on climate change mitigation and adaptation, circular economy, and other environmental objectives.

Green Building Council Spain (GBCE), along with other European GBCs, has played an active role in analysing how this regulation is applied in construction. Their studies reveal that the sector still faces significant challenges, mainly due to the lack of data and the difficulty of meeting the Taxonomy criteria, especially those related to the circular economy.

“We saw that the biggest challenge was not so much the Taxonomy framework itself, but the lack of a common measurement methodology and the lack of availability of building behaviour data,” states Bruno Sauer, director of GBC Spain.

To reduce confusion in the market, GBCE chose to accredit its Taxonomy-related program with ENAC, "to introduce greater rigor into the procedures for reviewing evidence and to reduce confusion caused by the dispersion of criteria in the market.” In this regard, he adds: "having the ENAC-accredited procedure for measuring and reporting seemed to us a basic task for GBCE to provide the entire construction sector with a clear and rigorous tool to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable model”.

GBCE, as a certification body, enables the validation procedure (during the project phase) and inspection (at the end of the work) of the Taxonomy, which in turn provides data to companies, financial bodies, and primarily to society, to know whether an investment in the real estate world is sustainable or not.  The calculation methodology and the reference values for classification are embedded in the European regulations, and their validation and inspection procedure is accredited by ENAC; no further guarantees can be given to the sector and society," concludes the director of GBC Spain.

Accreditation: a trusted tool for the market

The accreditation granted by ENAC under this program provides the market with greater trust and credibility and represents an inspection/validation model of compliance with the DNSH principle, promoting construction activities and adjacent activities that are more environmentally friendly towards a sustainable building that ensures that the afore-mentioned activities do not generate significant negative impacts on the environment.

ENAC was already a pioneer in 2022, globally, in accrediting validation and inspection schemes for DNSH principle compliance, in line with the European Taxonomy regulation.   

For more information about the accreditation of this type of activities, please contact Juan Pelaez, ENAC’s Certification and Inspection Department.