As world leaders come together for the global climate summit COP25, international companies need to do more to collaborate too. Global challenges need global solutions. That was the thinking behind British Land colleagues joining Swedish specialists to explore best practice projects together.

Both the UK and Sweden are operating under relatively progressive governmental targets, with Sweden targeting net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 and the UK committed to net zero by 2050. Together with some of my colleagues, I jumped at the opportunity to spend three days with architects, engineers and specialists in Sweden, investigating what the real estate sector is doing – and needs to do – in both countries to deliver our share of climate targets, and the insights that emerged have helped influence our approach to achieving net zero. 

Swedish consultant Sweco, one of our partners at Canada Water, hosted the study trip, which also involved teams from General Architecture and Veidekke Eiendom. Together, we looked at digital transformation, wooden buildings, smart cities and low or zero carbon buildings, along with sustainability standards and whole life carbon accounting. Here are a few of my takeaways.

Confidence to build in wood

Nordic countries have so much confidence to build in wood and are innovating with its use as a circular material. Sweden has a lot of sustainably managed forests, timber mills and the construction knowledge to use wooden materials to put up substantial buildings. It was fascinating listening to the team on one of the world's largest wooden house projects, Cederhusen, being built in central Stockholm. This is somewhere I’d like to live.

Here in the UK, we have further to go to get comfortable with timber, particularly around fire safety and supply chain issues with the skill set to deliver wooden buildings. But it’s worth investigating: timber is a light, efficient and potentially sustainable construction material. It also allows for a quieter build and fewer deliveries, which is good for people living close by, and offers better conditions for construction workers. Testing has shown Cederhusen satisfies all local regulations in fire safety, and the UK industry would benefit from establishing the same level of confidence, so we can reduce our reliance on more carbon-intensive materials.

The power of BIM

Alongside all the other clever things that Building Information Modelling (BIM) can do, it was exciting to see Sweco’s project to colour code BIM models for their embodied carbon impact. This makes it easy for design teams to visualise how design changes impact on embodied carbon content, so they can make optimised and informed decisions. 

The RICS framework for whole life carbon assessment in the built environment took the UK a big step forward, giving us a consistent framework to measure embodied carbon with. What I saw in Sweden is a glimpse of the future where carbon reporting is fully integrated into the design process. 

Smart cities and buildings

There’s some interesting parallel thinking in Sweden and the UK around smart cities and buildings. Looking at how real-time data from internet connected sensors and equipment can help us run buildings more efficiently and improve the customer experience. 

It was motivating to see other forward-thinking companies working to create the right digital environments to enhance physical environments, both in terms of how they’re operated and people’s experiences of them. 

Smart will be a vital tool in operating building as efficiently as possible. We need real-time data to understand in granular detail where and when energy is being consumed and we need intelligence – both machine and human – to make sense of that data to inform decisions and actions.

Collectively we’re all trying to solve these challenges

When I first joined British Land in 2010, my role was focused on making sense of real-time building data to improve operational energy efficiency. Fast forward nine years and we’ve improved operational energy efficiency by 44%, contributing to a 64% reduction in carbon intensity across our portfolio. 

We’re now interested in a wider set of data in real time, covering areas such as customer experience, employee wellbeing and space optimisation. We’re also making progress on other big sustainability challenges, like embodied carbon and sustainable energy sources. We’ve confirmed our commitment to net zero and are establishing science-based targets as part of our post-2020 strategy, supporting international efforts to limit global warming. 

Since we first rolled out smart energy management across our portfolio ten years ago, leading the industry, we’ve continued to innovate. It’s encouraging to see smart starting to be used by more real estate leaders to deliver sustainable outcomes internationally. The power of collaboration and smart to help solve global challenges gives me hope for the future.

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