Advocates say there’s a natural building material that could be part of the solution. Hemp, which comes from cannabis plants that have minimal amounts of the psychoactive substance tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), can act as a thermal regulator when used to insulate buildings.
“The summers are getting hotter,” says Olivier Beghin, the co-founder of IsoHemp, a Belgium-based company that makes hemp blocks. “We have a good solution in order to insulate against the heat.”
Today, only around 20% of homes in Europe have air conditioning. Even so, around 40% of the energy consumed in the European Union (EU) is used in buildings, mostly for heating, cooling and hot water. The EU says the building sector will be key to achieving its aim of carbon-neutrality by 2050, and that “hemp can play a significant role in reaching this objective.”
