Another innovation looking to increase efficiency and reduce waste is modular construction. The process is where a building, or parts of it, are constructed off-site, which brings its own advantages. In Denmark and the Nordic countries, given they are located in the northern part of Europe with limited daylight in the winter months, builders don’t have much time out in the field. Instead, many of the buildings are using a lot of prefabricated elements. This is a trend that actually reduces waste.
“When it comes to modular construction, safety, productivity and environmental impact, all of those things tie together,” says Jochen Teizer, associate professor in the department of civil and architectural engineering at Aarhus University. “If I do offsite fabrication and then ship it, I improve all of those things; reduce the waste in the assembly process but also increase the safety for the workers. That’s another advantage.”
But while innovations like electrification, digitisation and modular construction are all helping the industry to decarbonise and reduce waste, they don’t always work together at the same time.
“The construction industry has a lot of stakeholders involved in the projects. I think that’s one of the challenges we have,” says Teizer. “From architects, subcontractors to contractors, a lot of inefficiencies happen with communication, where people design a project one way, but then it gets executed in a different way. I think it will take a generation to see change. It ties back to educating our next generation of engineering workforce out there. So we need the right tools.”
Although slow, progress is being made. Building on the success of its first zero-emission urban construction site, the City of Oslo expects around 10 to 20 new projects launching this year will use heavy-duty zero emission equipment such as diggers, wheel loaders, trucks and drill rigs on site.
In addition, Oslo’s target that all construction sites be zero-emission by 2025 has sent a strong signal, and many construction companies are making plans for this transition. Construction equipment manufacturers are beginning to produce more electric machinery. In fact, a database of electric machinery is available with a link to public information about those machines to make it easier for cities who are looking for such machinery, and to convince them to start doing this.
Meanwhile, the Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) has launched a Clean Construction Declaration – which includes, amongst other commitments, a pledge to reduce emissions from construction sites. The declaration calls for procuring and, when possible, using only zero-emission construction machinery from 2025 onwards. Currently, around 40 cities around the world have signed up to the declaration, among them Oslo, Budapest, and even big cities outside Europe such as Los Angeles and Mexico City.
“Oslo is proof that zero emission construction is possible,” says Mortensen. “Here at Oslo’s Climate Agency, we see growing interest from different cities internationally in our work. Especially from dense cities, where many would benefit from clean construction.”
With sprawling cities around the world showing interest, the hope is that more will join and building an emission-free future for construction may well be within reach.
—
The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Find out more about how we calculated this figure here.
—
Join one million Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “The Essential List”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.
