Constraint

MPG and material requirements

The MPG is a building's environmental performance: a single number for the environmental impact of all its materials together. New build has a legal ceiling, and clients often set it lower still in their own tenders. If you have a product that meets it, you have to be there before the specification closes.

What is this constraint?

New homes and offices have a legal ceiling for the environmental performance of the building, the MPG. The number is calculated from the materials in it. Lower is better. In civil engineering the MKI does the same job for a project or a product.

That national ceiling is the floor, not the playing field. Municipalities and other clients set the requirement lower in their own tenders and land tenders, and ask for a share of biobased or reused material on top. One municipality reported an average MPG of 0.55 for new homes over 2025, and asked for 15 to 20 per cent biobased or recycled material in its land tenders.

For a supplier that changes the order of the conversation. Once the requirement is in the specification, the choice has largely been made. The moment that counts is earlier: the policy agreement, the land tender or the selection document in which a client decides how strict to be.

Modou reads the register of the Dutch national environmental database, which records which products are listed with which environmental performance. That is the fixed source for this constraint. What a specific project actually demands, Modou reads as dated text in the tender, the specification, the land tender or the agreement. Modou claims no national per-project MPG monitor here.

Which documents it shows up in

The register of the Dutch national environmental database: Why that is a reason to callIt records which products are listed with which environmental performance. If your product scores well, that is your argument in every tender steering on MPG or MKI.
Tenders and specifications with an MPG, MKI or biobased requirement: Why that is a reason to callThe requirement is in there in black and white, with a closing date. That is the last moment to have any influence.
Municipal land tenders and selection documents: Why that is a reason to callMunicipalities weigh material choice into the award here. Whoever is at the table before the document is written helps decide what goes in it.
Policy agreements and sustainability reports from clients: Why that is a reason to callThese state what a client will demand over the coming years, often years before the first tender.

Who sells into this

Construction suppliers

Biobased materials: timber, flax, hemp, straw
Concrete and masonry products with a low environmental cost indicator
Reused and circular facade and building products
Products with their own record in the national environmental database

Energy companies

Building services that count towards a building's environmental performance
Heating and ventilation systems with a low environmental impact

Example from a public document

Construction supplier

What happened

More than a hundred parties in a metropolitan region sign a pact: from 2030 at least twenty per cent of new build has to be timber or other biobased material. The pipeline already holds more than 12,000 timber homes.

Source:: Policy agreement
Date:: November 2025

Why this matters to you

Twenty per cent of new build in a single region is a volume the market does not supply today. If you make biobased or timber products, that pipeline buys from you.

Why now

The signatories are now translating the pact into their own land tenders and programmes. The requirements that go into them are being written this year.

Who to call

Sustainability adviser or municipal project lead at a signatory

Phone number, where publicly findable
LinkedIn, where publicly findable

This example comes from a public document.

Frequently asked questions

My product is in the national environmental database. Is that enough?

It is your evidence, not your sale. It makes your claim solid at the moment someone chooses. What you still need is to know who makes that choice and when. That is in the tender, the land tender and the agreement that came before it.

Why is there no specification with an actual MPG figure here?

Because we only use examples we could read back in a public document. We could not publicly verify a specification carrying such a figure for this page, so it is not here. What Modou finds in practice depends on what a client publishes.

Want to be there before the specification closes?

Plan a six-week pilot. Every working day you get the agreements, land tenders and tenders where the material requirement is written, with source, date and who to call.

Plan a pilot Run the opportunity check