Many more environmental aspects in tightened MPG

Today the House of Representatives is meeting on the new MPG, the Environmental Performance of Buildings, although it will not be discussed in detail. First, the maximum allowable MPG was supposed to be tightened by January 1, 2025, but its introduction was recently postponed until July 1, 2025. What are the biggest changes ahead and why this postponement?

The MPG indicates the total environmental impact of all materials used during construction, plus anything that must be maintained or replaced during the life of that building. Currently, an MPG calculation is mandatory for new office buildings (with office function as the main function) with an area of 100 square meters or more, and it is required for all new construction homes. The maximum MPG for new construction homes currently stands at 0.8 and for office buildings it is 1.

New uses

What is new is that soon there will also be environmental performance requirements for buildings with various other utilization functions. Such as a meeting function, healthcare function, industrial function, accommodation function, education function, sports function, or retail function. For buildings with multiple utilization functions, the environmental performance requirements per utilization function will be weighted by surface area.

Furthermore, separate requirements are imposed on smaller buildings, because otherwise the environmental pressure increases disproportionately quickly with a small floor area. It is also more clearly defined which parts of a building do and do not count in the MPG. Think, for example, of installations on the roof.

Revised determination method

Also new is the introduction of a revised version of the determination method (the 'Bepalingsmethode Milieuprestatie Bouwwerken') and associated weighting set, i.e. the way the environmental performance of building materials is calculated and weighted. Very important, because this has the effect of suddenly changing the level of the environmental performance requirement at the time of introduction. Because where the original intention was to raise the MPG from 0.8 to 0.5 for new construction houses and from 1 to 0.85 for office buildings, we will suddenly be faced with very different numbers.

For buildings with a residential function, the maximum allowable MPG goes from 0.5 to 1.0 and for an office function it even goes from 0.85 to 1.55. For new user functions for which environmental performance must soon also be calculated, the MPG is set at 1.85, which would have been 1.0 under the old (current) determination method. So the numbers roughly double. Why is this and what does it mean?

Not milder but stricter

Although it may seem that the environmental requirements are becoming a lot milder, it is quite the opposite. This is because the revised version of the determination method looks at many more environmental aspects than before and also applies a new weighting method. This automatically changes the height of the environmental performance score, as more facets are considered. So a higher maximum MPG value, but that is still a considerable tightening up compared to today's numbers.

Postponement

It was announced in October 2023 that the MPG standard would be tightened from January 1, 2025, but so it was recently announced that this tightening will be delayed by six months. Whereby the implementation will be postponed from January 1, 2025 to July 1, 2025. Partly because it turned out that especially timber construction and bio-based buildings score rather poorly under the new determination method and thus receive a remarkably poor MPG. And that while these construction methods are actually encouraged and seen as environmentally friendly.

A possible solution could be to give less weight to certain environmental indicators, and in the meantime there has been an extensive consultation process between the ministry and the industry associations on this issue. Wooden construction materials will therefore still receive a better rating in MPG calculations.