Towards a Zero Emission Built Environment in Norway Pilot projects of sustainable climate-adapted architecture and the national research for carbon neutral buildings

Hannelore Christiaens, Aoife Anne Marie Houlihan Wiberg

    Research output: Book/ReportCommissioned reportpeer-review

    Abstract

    Climate change, as a consequence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, is a challenge that has to be tackled worldwide. As buildings account for 40% of all energy consumption over the world today, major changes have to be made to the built environment worldwide. Norway has made the ambitious statement to be carbon neutral by 2030. Consequently, the built environment will have to help to reach this goal. Therefore, Norway is presented as an interesting model to analyse how a country will work towards this goal in practice. First, the boundary conditions of Norway had to be explained. The climate, demographics, means of electricity production (hydropower) and many more boundary conditions influence the strategy that Norway can use in order to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gasses. Second, the most important sectors and actors that are playing a key role in this process are introduced. They are complementary and will help each other in projects. Third, the Zero Emission Buildings centre is introduced. This centre is working on the exact definitions of climate friendly buildings and how greenhouse gas emissions should be calculated precisely. Pilot projects play a key role in the implementation of this theoretical work. Three interesting projects on three different scales are presented. The larger the scale, the more holistic the definition of sustainability will become. At the end we can conclude that a large national collective network has been made and that all the initiatives discussed in the thesis are connected and support each other directly or indirectly. This is a unique achievement and it leads to the conclusion that Norway’s approach to sustainability is a very interesting model indeed. Other countries can learn from the Norwegian approach. Towards a Zero Emission Built Environment in Norway Pilot projects of sustainable climate-adapted architecture and the national research for carbon neutral buildings
    Original languageEnglish
    PublisherK.U. Leuven
    Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 2012

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