Jacek Michalak, Ph.D, Eng.

Polish Association for ETICS (SSO)

Ralf Pasker, M.A.

European Association for ETICS (EAE)

 
The recent geopolitical developments have demonstrated once again Europe’s vulnerability in terms of energy supplies and its susceptibility to energy price shocks. This impacts the affordability of housing, as 40% of Europe’s energy is still consumed in buildings. Thermal renovation of buildings offers significant leverage to make Europe less dependent and, at the same time, supports the European Commission’s Better Homes initiative. The presentation will provide an overview of Europe’s aging building stock, as well as the latest figures and developments in the European ETICS market.

Rafael Bischof, M.Sc., Eng.

Institute for Industrial Production (IIP), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

In Germany, the widespread use of EPS-based ETICS since the 1970s is now creating a delayed end-of-life challenge, as facade deconstruction often generates mixed and contaminated waste streams, while current treatment in waste incineration plants remains largely linear, capacity-constrained, and poorly aligned with circular-economy goals. This presentation showcases two published studies that predict the upcoming ETICS waste wave in Germany and identify its timing and spatial distribution through two independent modeling perspectives: a top-down allocation model and a bottom-up building-stock model. The top-down approach allocates ETICS installation data across building types, construction age classes, and NUTS-3 regions, while the bottom-up approach reconstructs ETICS quantities directly from the German building stock, independent of industry data and with improved granularity. Taken together, both approaches point to the same core result for Germany: annual EPS waste from ETICS will rise sharply in the coming years and is expected to increase roughly fourfold by around 2050. They also show that this wave can be forecast with temporal and spatial precision, making visible when and where future waste pressures will emerge, including pronounced regional concentrations at the NUTS-3 level, thereby enabling more targeted waste-management planning. The core challenge now is to prepare and implement suitable circular end-of-life solutions in time; from dismantling and sorting to recycling capacity and alternative recovery pathways.

Magdalena Bardan, M.Sc., Eng.

Department of Building Materials Engineering, Building Research Institute (ITB)

Mariusz Garecki, Ph.D., Eng. (Atlas sp. z o.o/SSO),
Tomasz Zembrowski, M.Sc., Eng. (Henkel Polska sp. z o.o/SSO)

participants: Paweł Bigaj (Bolix/SSO), Paweł Gaciek (Bolix/SSO), Marek Grzesiak (Knauf sp. z o.o./SSO), Anna Jarosik (Mapei/SSO), Marcin Kulesza (Atlas/SSO), Łukasz Kuriata (Baumit/SSO), Paweł Pogorzelec (Greinplast/SSO), Bartosz Polaczyk (Kreisel/SSO),  Dariusz Butkiewicz (Sto/SSO), Sławomir Zalewski (Piotrowice/SSO)

moderators: Mariusz Garecki i Tomasz Zembrowski