The twin transition, combining Europe’s digital and green transformation, has been on the forefront of European policy since the European Green Deal (2019). Subsequent policy initiatives, e.g. the Renovation Wave Strategy (2020), and regulatory frameworks, e.g. the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (2024), have all confirmed this twin transition paradigm. The recently revised Construction Products Regulation (2024) and the Ecodesign Sustainability Product Regulation (2024) place digital information at the core of the EU's circular economy strategy, positioning Digital Product Passports (DPP) as a key mechanism for improving material traceability, repairability, reuse, and lifecycle sustainability for new buildings.
As the EU moves from designing DPP to implementing them, much of the discussion has focused on technical architecture. Policymakers debate interoperability standards, data structures, information requirements, and the integration of digital tools into increasingly complex construction supply chains. Yet amid this growing enthusiasm for digitalisation across the construction sector, a fundamental legal question has received comparatively limited attention. What happens when these systems need to be applied to buildings that already exist? This question matters because the future of sustainable construction in Europe is not primarily about new buildings. It is about renovation.
From Product Regulation to Information Governance
The emergence of DPPs reflects a significant evolution in European sustainability law. Historically, environmental regulation in the built environment focused on physical outcomes. Legal intervention centred on energy performance, emissions reductions, waste management, product safety, or environmental impacts associated with construction activities. Information certainly mattered, but it generally occupied a supporting role. The recent generation of EU legislation suggests something different. Information is increasingly becoming an object of regulation in its own right.
Under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (2024) and Construction Products Regulation (2024), sustainability objectives are no longer pursued solely through requirements imposed upon products or buildings themselves. They are increasingly pursued through obligations concerning the production, maintenance, accessibility, and circulation of information about those products and buildings. Material composition, environmental performance, repairability, recycled content, lifecycle impacts, and end-of-life options become matters not only of technical assessment but of legal documentation and ongoing informational governance. This development reflects an important insight at the heart of the circular economy. Materials can only legally circulate if information circulates with them.
A reused steel beam, reclaimed timber, or recycled façade component only becomes commercially and legally viable if reliable information concerning its provenance, composition, safety, and performance remains accessible. Without trusted information systems, circularity is difficult to operationalise. Liability risks increase, insurance becomes more complex, compliance becomes uncertain, and secondary markets struggle to develop. A good example of this can be found in Flanders in which the traceability organisation for construction and demolition waste can have difficulties deciding on the best circular strategy for the reclaimed materials. Due to lack of past information recycling is often considered to be the only viable strategy. Digital tools (e.g. blockchain) could help make the process more efficient.
The transition towards circular construction therefore depends not simply on material innovation but on the governance of information over time.
The Missing Renovation Question
The overwhelming majority of the buildings that Europeans will occupy in 2050 have already been constructed. Consequently, the success of Europe's sustainability transition is likely to depend less on the capacity to embed digital information systems within future developments than on the ability of legal and regulatory frameworks to govern information across the extended and often fragmented lifecycles of existing buildings.
Earlier policy and regulatory initiatives surrounding the twin transition heavily emphasised the energy-related aspects of existing buildings, tackling energy poverty, generating (digital) insights in energy usage, etc. Nevertheless, for the built environment to become truly sustainable, sufficient attention should be given to an optimal use of resources and materials as well. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (2024), the Construction Products Regulation (2024) and the European Critical Raw Materials Act (2024) try to strengthen circular material use within the European Union through digitalization.
However, this is where current policy discussions often become problematic. Much of the emerging discourse surrounding DPPs implicitly assumes a new-build environment. Information is generated at the design stage, integrated through Building Information Modelling or other tools, transferred through procurement processes, and maintained throughout construction and occupation. Responsibilities can be allocated contractually, and digital systems can be embedded from the outset. This is not how most sustainability transitions occur. Across Europe, renovation and refurbishment projects increasingly dominate efforts to improve energy performance, reduce embodied carbon, and extend building lifespans. The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (2025) places renovation at the centre of decarbonisation policy, reflecting the reality that Europe's existing building stock represents both its greatest environmental challenge and its greatest opportunity.
Yet renovation exposes a fundamentally different informational landscape. Existing buildings frequently contain fragmented records, undocumented alterations, incomplete material histories, and data that has been lost through decades of ownership changes, maintenance activities, and refurbishment projects. Information often exists across multiple disconnected repositories, if it exists at all. Responsibility for maintaining or updating information becomes increasingly diffuse as buildings pass through successive contractual and ownership arrangements. These elements reveal that DPPs are ultimately as much about governance as they are about technology.
The built environment presents us with additional complexity as buildings consist of different layers each with their own lifespan. Based on the earlier policy emphasis on energy however, this layered approach could be an opportunity as well. The first steps of introducing DPPs in the existing building stock through renovation projects could focus on – ideally easily detachable - materials and products associated with the technical systems of a building (e.g. energy systems). Through future renovations in other layers, the building could eventually end up with a digital twin encompassing all necessary information to ensure higher circular strategies (e.g. reuse) can be applied at the end-of-life stage of course, but achieving this outcome is far from guaranteed.
The challenge facing policymakers is not simply one of technical implementation. It is one of institutional design. Unless questions of responsibility, liability, accessibility, and governance are addressed, digital information systems risk reproducing existing forms of fragmentation in digital form. Within the EU, ensuring that frameworks designed by the Member States align, creates an additional layer of complexity.
Beyond the Checkbox
Europe’s digital construction agenda is moving from ambition to implementation. The big question is no longer whether information matters—it is whether the law can keep that information accurate, accessible and accountable across the decades-long life of a building.
Get this right, and DPPs could become a powerful engine for circularity and sustainable construction. Get it wrong, and they risk becoming just another compliance box to tick. What happens next will determine whether DPPs merely document the built environment or genuinely help transform it.
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This blog post is based on the paper to be presented at the conference Sustainability Law: Law’s Response to the Convergence of Crises, 16-18 September 2026, at the University of Oslo
