Two year Milestone in the Nordic Sustainable Construction Programme

Overview: Results from Nordic Sustainable Construction since September 2023

Work Package 1 on Nordic Harmonisation of LCA

• The work package hosted a successful webinar on LCA Database and scenarios as well as a webinar on BIM-Based Building LCA
• Published a report on the Operational Environment of Building LCA and BIM in the Nordics and Estonia

Upcoming activities:

• Free webinar on limit values and monitoring decarbonisation of the building stock, January 26^th

Work Package 2 on Circular Business Models and Procurement

• The work package continues working on pilot projects with Nordic Smart Cities (Tampere and Stavanger) to include circular thinking and procurement in the planning process and new tenders

Upcoming activities:

• Report from Nordic Blue Building Alliance, Technical Playbook on Marine Biobased Low Carbon Building Materials. Read about the Nordic Network here
• A conference on Circular material management & effective transports in the Nordics (tbc)

Work Package 3 on Sustainable Building Materials and Architecture

• Roundtable discussions on
  • Material hierarchy in construction

Upcoming activities:

• Article and roundtable discussion on
  • The unheard voices in architecture and construction policy
  • Onboarding legislation for a regenerative future
  • Place based design and architecture as a community builder

Work Package 4 on Emission-free Construction Sites

• The work package published a video on Nordic Construction Sites Aiming to reduce waste and emissions  
• The Nordic Ministers reconfirmed the goal of low carbon construction and circular principles in the construction sector in a new declaration

Upcoming activities:

• Report: Emission-free Construction Sites - Knowledge Gaps and Research Needs
• Newsletter for the network of corporation on emissions free construction sites
• Guidelines on how to plan, procure and evaluate emission-free construction sites

Work Package 5 of the Programme Secretariat

• The secretariat has participated in different conferences promoting the programme, including COP28
• Ongoing sharing and communication of results from the programme

Upcoming activities:

• Teaching materials from the project ‘Competences for Reuse in Construction’ will soon be published on a website in all Nordic languages

Can the Built Environment Contribute to the Next Phase of Nordic Vision 2030?

The Nordic Vision 2030 aims for the Nordic countries to be the most sustainable and integrated region in the world by 2030. The first phase of the road towards this vision will end this year. Hence the Nordic countries have started to consider and will discuss what could be highly relevant topics to collaborate on towards 2030 to contribute to the Vision 2030.

Therefore 2024 will be a special year for Nordic Sustainable Construction and related projects, as it is the year with the final results from the programme. At the same time, it is the year to define possible next topics and goals for collaboration. During the meeting data was a theme that was highlighted by all the work packages. The work package leaders estimated that the ability to collect and use data is going to be of great importance for reaching the goals of lowering the emissions and negative impacts of the sector. Therefore, they agreed that data and digitalisation will play an important role in the coming years toward 2030.

Stay tuned

If you want to know more about the programme and the coming discussions on what the Nordic countries could collaborate on after 2024, then follow us on Linkedin and on this website.