The construction and use of buildings in the EU account for about half of all our extracted materials. As the energy efficiency of buildings improves, the embodied impacts of materials (e.g. CO2) and the cost of materials become more signifcant across the full building life cycle. The informaiton gathered for indicator2.1 underpins the assessment of a number of other levels (s) inidcators (especially, 1.2, 2.3 and any life cycle assesdment (LCA) of Life cycle cost (LCC) analysis.