News from Nordic working group for LCA, climate and buildings

Background

Dear reader, the background for this newsletter is the work for Nordic harmonization of building regulations concerning climate emissions that started with a decision from The Nordic Council of Ministers 29 of May 2018 in Stockholm. As a result, a conference, Nordic Climate Forum for Construction, in Malmö the 3rd of October, were arranged to bring together the Nordic construction authorities and the foremost in academia and construction industry. The main target for the conference was to start up the work for Nordic harmonization on regulations and climate emissions from buildings from a life cycle perspective.

To bring the Nordic cooperation forward after the conference, a platform for dialogue and exchange of information has been formed. The platform consist of a working group, the Nordic working group for LCA, climate and buildings which consist of around 30 representatives from the Nordic building authorities, academia and industry, and a bigger network of representatives from academia and industry. This newsletter is sent out to that network to keep you informed about what is happening witihin the wokring group.

In this newsletter you will find news from the working group as well as two upcoming events, one webinar in May and the next Nordic Climate Forum in August.

News from the working group

The working group have had three meetings so far. The first two meeting where dedicated to developing a program for the group and discussing the results from the conference in Malmö. To give you a glimpse of what the group are doing and will do in the future the expected impacts and the targets from the program can be seen below.

Expected impacts

• The Nordic countries have compatible approaches to building regulation, methodology and the assessment of climate emissions from buildings, and share best practice on the subject.
• Reduce the building sector's climate emissions following the same rate as national climate neutrality goals require.
• The Nordic collaboration has made it easier for the industry to construct low carbon buildings in the Nordic countries.

Targets

• The Nordic authorities will organize an annual conference and a webb climate forum within the topic – in cooperation with this working group.
• The Nordic authorities organizes web meetings for the working group in collaboration with with Swedish Life Cycle Center.
• Identify key areas for harmonization and a plan for harmonization will be presented in the next conference in Copenhagen 2020.
• The Nordic countries have initiated common projects.
• Being an arena for exchange of best practice.

At the third meeting the authorities that are moving forward with regulations for calculating climate emissions presented their respective proposals and that was followed by a discussion about how the Nordic countries best can move further towards harmonization with starting point in the presentations given. This gave the authorities valuable input to the process and there was also a chance for the group to gather good examples of ongoing projects and other experiences regarding low carbon construction.

If you are interested in knowing more about state of the art in the Nordic countries there will be a presentation from the authorities at the webinar on May 29. The webinar will also give a summary from the last meeting and the dialogue that took place.

The planning for this years Nordic climate Forum for construction, that will be held online due to Corona, has started as well and the date is set. Read more about that below.

If you have any questions about the network and/or the working group, please contact Maria Rydberg, maria.rydberg@chalmers.se or visit the working group page.

Events

More info