The government has a climate goal to reduce the country's CO2 emissions by 70 per cent by 2030 and to become climate neutral by 2050. This has created a huge focus on the green transition in both public and private organisations. As a result, customers are now demanding more documentation, including CO2 emissions, from their suppliers. This places new demands on you and your business.
Construction industry wins on CO2 emissions
Construction accounts for more than 40 per cent of total Danish CO2 emissions, making the construction industry one of the largest contributors to CO2 emissions. These are alarming figures that the industry has been aware of for many years and has been working to change.
Construction CO2 emissions can be divided into two categories:
- CO2 emissions from operational energy
- CO2 emissions from building materials (embodied energy)
CO2 emissions from operational energy
Operational energy includes energy consumption for heating, cooling and lighting. Reducing energy consumption in buildings, so-called ”energy efficiency”, has been in focus for many decades and there has been a positive development. Buildings today are being designed to be far more sustainable and energy efficient. More construction companies are now also using modern technologies that ensure better energy utilisation, optimised resource consumption and improved indoor climate. This all helps to reduce overall energy consumption.
CO2 emissions from building materials
This category includes all the CO2 that originates from the production of the building material, including extraction, construction process, use, disposal and recycling. This is the total primary energy demand for the entire building's life cycle.
Building materials have a greater impact on the climate than operations. This is because there has been a remarkable development in terms of energy efficiency. The Danish energy supply is also becoming greener all the time. There are many new requirements to comply with when it comes to operational energy, but there are almost no rules and requirements that regulate the climate impact of building materials.
In over 60 years, operational energy consumption has been reduced from 350 kW/m2 to 20 kW/m2. However, the carbon footprint of building materials has been an overlooked area in the sustainable construction discussion, even though it accounts for a large percentage of global CO2 emissions.
The World Building Council has an ambitious vision to ‘decarbonise’, eliminating the use of coal throughout the building sector by 2050, but in order to do so, it is necessary to eliminate CO2 emissions from both operational and embodied energy.
National strategy for more sustainable construction
Climate experts agree that CO2 emissions from building materials and recycling should be a high priority on the agenda, and with political backing, it's getting a new lease of life. Denmark has been given a national strategy for sustainable construction, On 5 March 2021, a broad majority in the Danish Parliament reached an agreement to ensure the phasing-in of CO2 requirements for all major new buildings from 2023.
The parties to the agreement agree that CO2 requirements for new buildings larger than 1,000 square metres will be introduced as early as 2023, so that they cannot emit more than 12 kg CO2 per square metre, and that CO2 requirements for new buildings in general, including smaller private homes, will be introduced from 2025. However, a final requirement for maximum CO2 emissions for buildings is not expected until 2027. When the test period for the voluntary sustainability class is complete, there should be no shortage of prerequisites for assessing and setting CO2 requirements in the sustainability class.
Lifecycle analysis to ensure development
Until now, the construction industry has lacked the knowledge and tools to measure CO2 consumption.
This is about to change with the help of LCA, which is a kind of life cycle analysis for a building. In an LCA assessment, all CO2 consumption is included - for example, the extraction and processing of building materials, transport to the construction site, the actual construction of the building, and of course the CO2 consumption for heating and maintenance once the building is in use. The entire assessment is made in a 50-year perspective, and the figure is then boiled down to show how many kilos of CO2 the building emits per square metre per year.
From 2023, when an ordinary owner of a detached house has to include an LCA assessment in building permit applications, it will probably typically be an engineering company that is responsible for the calculations. The idea is that the LCA assessment will become as natural and formalised a part of a building application as energy and structural calculations are today.
Control your carbon footprint
Because life cycle analyses have only been carried out on a relatively small number of buildings, politicians will not currently set the limits that will become mandatory for all buildings in the future, but according to the agreement, the limits will be lowered again in 2027 and 2029. However, the government's climate goals for 2050 have already contributed to a huge focus on green transition in both public and private industries. This requires more documentation from companies about CO2 emissions in the construction industry.
To remain competitive, you need to be able to document the CO2 emissions associated with construction work. Several companies are choosing to digitise their documentation to make their work more efficient. This is for example. possible with an administrative tool, which we offer in Intempus.
Are you curious about how a solution from Intempus can make it easier and more manageable to document your CO2 consumption? Then give us a call at +45 26390400 or book a free, no-obligation demo:
Sources: The Danish Energy Agency, Business Insights, CSR
