Customers & Businesses

The world's population is due to grow by 33% by 2050, to 9 billion. Homes, workplaces and transport infrastructure will be needed for 2 billion extra people. It will therefore be necessary to build, but differently, since the building sector alone is responsible for around 37% of energy consumption and 40% of CO2 emissions globally.

Lafarge is fully aware of this situation and incorporated sustainable construction into its strategy at a very early stage. The aim is to limit as far as possible buildings' environmental impact while preserving their attractiveness and comfort.

The Group uses 2 main levers to achieve this:

• Innovation: more than 50% of R&D investments are devoted to sustainable construction.
• An active partnership approach: sustainable construction responds to major economic, social and environmental challenges which involve the whole construction sector. That is why Lafarge is working with many players in the sector to make buildings more sustainable.

The construction sector in France is searching for greater energy efficiency, in a context of global sustainable construction challenges. By setting a target for overall consumption of 50kWh.m²/year by 2012, French legislation has begun the process of making Low-Energy Buildings (LEBs) more widespread.

Lafarge has teamed up with French residential construction company Maisons Bernard Jambert to design and build the Jambert-Lafarge LEB home. Construction began in January 2010 and will be completed by the end of the year. The partnership's objectives are to promote traditional construction methods (cement, concrete and gypsum) and provide effective, sustainable solutions to buildings' energy performance challenges.

To do this, the Group particularly provided:

• Agilia® for the foundations, slab and screed, etc.
• Unimat® for the sub-screed and sub-slab insulation, etc.
• Prégymax® 29.5 plasterboard for the internal thermal insulation,
• Prégymetal® plasterboard for dividing partitions,
• Synia® plasterboard for the ceilings,
• Prégydro™ plasterboard for the bathrooms...

These objectives were achieved since a thermal study conducted by a certified engineering office demonstrates that the house's overall consumption is less than 48kWh.m²/year! And in December 2009, the house was awarded a gold medal in the "Town House" category at the "Challenge des Maisons Innovantes" awards, a competition encouraging creativity and innovation in residential construction.

As well as its energy qualities, the main market advantages of the house are:

• aesthetic, comfortable and user-friendly architecture,
• quality services at an attractive price,
• a home which is wheelchair accessible,
• plans which can be reproduced on a mass scale and at low cost.