CoAction Lund gears up with focus on climate-neutral construction

Lund Municipality has a Plan for climate-neutral construction and construction adopted in 2023. It sets out Lund Municipality's goals in terms of the construction sector - such as the municipality to halve its climate impact in the next few years in what it builds itself. The plan also includes a desire to set up a collaboration platform for a climate-neutral construction sector in Lund Municipality, where, through a voluntary agreement and joint commitments, it wants to enable a power pool to achieve a climate-neutral and circular construction sector by 2030. Now the municipality of Lund uses the well-functioning cooperation CoAction Lund to reach out to many actors in Lund.

This is partly based on a collaboration called LFM 30 in the neighboring municipality of Malmö. It is an initiative that the City of Malmö participated in and started together with actors in the construction industry to create a climate-neutral construction sector in Malmö. The interest was great and now there are over 200 members and the municipality of Lund has followed and participated in the work.

“Their work has made this whole region work together in a way that has never happened before,” says Adam Wadsten, environmental strategist and coordinator for climate-neutral construction  in Lund Municipality. They share knowledge, start from common challenges and become better together. It is unique and we have spun it further and utilise their methodology and knowledge.

Since many actors are active not only in Malmö but often in the rest of Skåne and Sweden, Lund has seen no reason to create a similar network. Instead, they have chosen to work through CoAction Lund, where there is a different type of participant, also outside the construction industry, for example both small and large companies and employers in many different industries.

“It is a great benefit that many of the buyers of buildings are located in CoAction Lund,” continues Adam Wadsten. The actors in the municipality need both new buildings and to care for their old ones. It can be a coordinated movement where CoAction becomes a starting point. Since many of the actors in Lund are global players, our work can bring about a shift that does not only benefit Lund.

The idea is to use the skills and knowledge that have been built up so that the CoAction Lund team can take advantage of this. The hope is to achieve at least the reduction that is not cost-driving, both in new construction and in, for example, demolition and reuse of materials. Through the LFM30, our own cost estimates and the experience of others, it has been seen that between 20 and 30% reduction of the climate burden is quite possible without any extra cost.

“If we can reduce the climate burden by 25% just by talking together, that's great,” Adam Wadsten points out. As long as one plans and actively chooses materials, it is quite possible and it may even be cheaper in the end. Then there are certainly actors in Lund who actually have a higher level of ambition. We need to be helped to set the target pictures and see what processes we need to work with. The sooner one enters the process, the greater the effect and the less additional cost.

There is also the idea of being able to share successful ways of doing procurements. In this way, the actors can copy each other and know roughly what different formulations generate for effects. In general, it is about looking at the entire life cycle of the building. Lund Municipality's internal goal is to reduce emissions from all construction from its own construction to 50 percent as soon as possible in order to become climate-neutral by 2030.

“Then we have to reduce perhaps to between 70 and 75 percent,” concludes Adam Wadsten. We will balance the last percent, for example by building in more biobiomaterials, digging biochar into the beds, rewetting wetlands or buying emission credits. It's maybe tough goals internally, but rather that than setting too easy targets. Everything is impossible until you have done it.

How do you begin this work in concrete terms?

“We will have a reception meeting on 9 March and we hope that everyone who builds or manages properties in Lund will want to be involved.

Do you want to come to the startup meeting on March 9?

Koncontact Adam.Wadsten@lund.se