Category: News

On 29 May 2026 the deadline expired for Member States to transpose the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD, 2024/1275). According to the Green Building Council España, Spain had covered 60% of the 155 provisions requiring transposition by that date. Still pending are, among others, the RITE thermal installations regulation, renovation passports, building databases and the infrastructure for the Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI, due June 2027).

A few weeks ago, Accumin — through its real estate data and intelligence division — published a study confirming something TALAT has argued from the site office for years: a building’s energy performance isn’t decided by its façade, it’s decided by its systems. Based on energy certificates registered with Spain’s Ministry for Ecological Transition, the study found that 94.2% of Spanish homes carry an inefficient rating (grades D to G), with 67.3% concentrated in grade E alone.

This week marks the end of the two-month window the European Commission gave member states, Spain included, to complete transposition of Directive (EU) 2024/1275 on the Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD), after opening infringement proceedings in July against all 27 countries for missing the original 29 May deadline. This is no routine paperwork: it is the clearest signal yet that Brussels intends to accelerate, with firm dates and penalties attached, the decarbonisation of Europe’s building stock ahead of 2050.

The difference between technical supervision and works direction in a construction project can be very subtle; some people even consider the two concepts to be synonyms. However, although they are sometimes used interchangeably, there are differences in the responsibilities and duties of each role that need to be taken into account.

For decades, “prefab” sounded like an emergency fix or a construction-site cabin. That’s changing fast, and not because of fashion: two recent stories confirm it with hard numbers, one from the world’s largest housing market and one less than 300 kilometers from our offices.

A number surfaced this week that sums up where industry is heading better than any report could: DFactory Barcelona, the largest Industry 4.0 hub in southern Europe, is tripling its footprint, growing from 17,000 to 60,000 m² before the end of the year, backed by a €50 million investment. The site currently operates at full occupancy with 44 companies installed, and the expansion is expected to generate 1,500 direct jobs and 5,000 indirect ones. In Catalonia, Industry 4.0-specialized companies now number 1,447 — triple the figure of four years ago — accounting for 2.6% of regional GDP.

We talk a lot about algorithms, but artificial intelligence is, above all, an infrastructure problem. According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) latest report, electricity demand from data centres surged 17% in 2025, while demand from AI-focused data centres specifically grew by 50% over the same period. The projection for 2030 is even more striking: from 485 TWh to 950 TWh globally, nearly doubling in five years. Just five major tech companies invested over $400 billion in 2025 alone — a figure that already exceeds global investment in oil and gas production.

This isn’t a minor detail for the industrial sector: it means AI has effectively become a first-tier industrial consumer, with the same grid, power, and planning demands as a steel mill or a chemical plant.

The International Energy Agency just published a figure worth reading twice: by 2030, data centres will account for roughly 3% of global electricity consumption — as much as all of Japan combined. To sustain that growth, the world will mobilise close to two trillion dollars in digital infrastructure before the decade is out. In 2026 alone, Big Tech’s spending on this race could reach $700 billion, up from $400 billion in 2025.

This isn’t an abstract, far-off statistic. Spain has become one of the epicentres of this boom: the country has attracted over €34 billion in data centre investment in just six months, with a project pipeline nearing €90 billion. Every new facility announced raises the same underlying question — the one that actually matters to us as engineers: where will all that energy come from, and how do we manage it without the planet footing the bill?