The focus on sustainable construction in the construction sector has grown over the past few decades, driven by political goals, industry innovation, environmental awareness, and public demand. As stricter energy efficiency standards are introduced in the national regulations and building codes, efforts have been concentrated on reducing CO₂ emissions related to construction material use, building design and system optimisation. As an example, in 2023, Denmark made climate impact documentation mandatory for most buildings using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and introduced a CO₂ limit of 12 kg CO₂e/m²/year for buildings over 1,000 m². By 2025, these requirements were expanded and tightened, setting CO₂ limits for the majority of new buildings. Alongside the EU Taxonomy and ESG reporting obligations, this has led to a strong focus in the construction industry on reducing emissions through circular strategies and more efficient production processes.

To support this rapidly changing focus, civil engineering education curricula must change and adapt to include new competencies to tackle these challenges for future engineers. However, there is currently a mismatch between the traditional curriculum within civil engineering education and the sectors' changing demands for skills and competences within sustainability and circularity in the construction sector. The traditional curriculum for construction materials focuses mainly on the extraction of raw materials, manufacturing and use from a linear point of view, where the raw materials and energy are considered almost infinite sources, and where waste and emissions are managed and monitored. To support the green transition of the construction sector, education at all levels needs to involve the development of skills and competencies to support the circular sustainable approach, which is part of the Horizon Europe project GREENCO (Education for GREEN transformation of COnstruction sector) that the current study belongs to.

The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has sustainability as one of its three objectives in the strategy 2020-2025, which also includes education. This study aimed at mapping the sustainability and circular competences in construction materials courses in the current curriculum offered by the Department of Environmental and Resource Engineering at DTU and identifying courses and course elements where sustainability and circular competences should be included in the near future. The mapping consisted of reviewing the course descriptions of courses at the Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Engineering, Master of Science and PhD levels. The identified sustainability/circular learning objectives were categorised into levels according to taxonomy and whether they were related to general or technical competences. The results showed a large variation of sustainable/circular oriented learning objectives and curriculum descriptions, where a few courses were mainly focusing on sustainability and therefore (almost) all learning objectives were related to these competences, whereas other courses had none. This mapping represents an important first step in the transformation of the construction material curriculum for future demands.

Keywords: Curriculum, comptences, higher education.