Giga Regio Factory: Scaling Industrialised, Affordable Net-Zero Renovation Across Europe

Europe faces a major challenge: most buildings that will exist in 2050 are already built today, and the pace of energy renovation is far too slow to meet climate goals. The building sector accounts for around 40 % of energy consumption and one-third of CO₂ emissions, meaning deep renovation of the existing building stock is essential for decarbonisation and improving quality of life.

To address this challenge, the LIFE Giga Regio Factory project is advancing industrialised deep renovation solutions, building on the pioneering Energiesprong approach to make net-zero retrofits faster, cheaper and more reliable across Europe.

Why Industrialised Renovation Matters

Current renovation approaches are too slow, fragmented and costly to achieve Europe’s climate targets. The EU’s Renovation Wave strategy aims to double annual renovation rates and upgrade 35 million inefficient buildings by 2030, creating jobs and improving living standards. Industrialised deep renovation helps meet this goal by:

• Speeding up construction with prefabricated components like façades, roofs and energy modules.

• Reducing disruption for occupants.

• Improving quality and durability with standardised processes.

• Lowering emissions through optimised logistics, low-carbon materials and waste reduction.

What Giga Regio Factory Does

The project builds on Energiesprong’s success — which scaled deep renovation markets in markets such as the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy — by focusing on aggregated demand, industrial solutions and regional scaling.

Key elements include:

Open-source Retrofit Tool

An open-source digital tool helps housing organisations identify similar building types across portfolios so they can be grouped into homogeneous clusters suitable for industrialised renovation. This enables collective purchasing and planning of deep renovation projects, lowering cost and complexity.

Support for Construction Integrators

The project maps and benchmarks hundreds of construction and industrial companies to develop complete industrialised net-zero renovation solutions. Training kits and resources help builders transition from bespoke projects to product-oriented catalogues of standardised solutions.

Boosting Manufacturing Capacity

By assessing industrial readiness and supporting business planning, Giga Regio Factory helps solution providers scale up production capacity — a critical step toward establishing regional “giga factories” able to meet growing demand for deep renovation.

Impact and Legacy

Over the course of the project, Giga Regio Factory has supported renovation initiatives resulting in measurable CO₂ savings and has generated tools and guidance that will continue to be used beyond the project’s end.

Open-source tools and resources will be maintained by the Energiesprong Global Alliance, enabling replication and further innovation across Europe. The project also feeds into new EU-funded initiatives focused on collective buying schemes and district-scale renovation strategies.

What’s Next?

Giga Regio Factory’s approach — bringing together prefabrication, digital tools, training and organised demand — is helping shift Europe’s renovation market toward scalable, affordable net-zero solutions. With continued collaboration among policymakers, regional developers, manufacturers and housing organisations, this model aims to unlock massive renovation volumes needed for a climate-neutral building stock by 2050.

This blog contains information from an original article of 15 December 2025 — by Yulia Firsova (GreenWin, on behalf of LIFE Giga Regio Factory).