Cecilia Fasth: Being green is a quality stamp

As much as 40% of all CO2 emissions in Europe come from buildings. Swedish construction company Skanska construct buildings with low or zero emissions. The company’s Green Business Officer, Cecilia Fasth, explains more.

– How would you describe a green building?

“A green building is built with resource-efficient building materials, and it reduces waste production, water use and energy consumption. It utilises renewable sources of energy and has low or zero carbon emissions. In the future, a building’s location will play a bigger role in defining whether it can be called green. Whether the building is accessible by public transport and if there are pavements and bicycle tracks in the area to allow people to walk or cycle to it will become more and more important.”

– The New Karolinska Solna hospital, which NIB helps to finance, will be the largest university hospital in the world to be environmentally certified. What does this imply?

“The New Karolinska Solna is groundbreaking in most respects. It is Skanska’s largest construction contract ever, possibly the world’s largest PPP hospital project to date and the first PPP hospital targeting environmental LEED Gold certification.

We won the project thanks to our experienced people and financial strength. The winning team included our Swedish, UK and US healthcare experts as well as our green and financial expertise. The design of the New Karolinska Solna will bring a new approach to healthcare. Patients will be the focus, given single rooms contained in a multi-expert, multi-discipline ward.

When people need health care, they are in a vulnerable state. It is important that the whole atmosphere in a hospital is as positive as possible. The founding values of patient care should be reflected in the building’s construction too. A PPP hospital is a unique possibility in this sense, as we control the design and part of the personnel is employed by the constructor in the operational phase.”

– The LEED certificate has four different levels, and there are several other certificates. Are we about to end up with a jungle of certificates which make it impossible for the end users to spot the good from the bad?

“I do not believe this is a threat. The construction sector is globalised. Working in a global world you meet international trademarks and certification systems. A common set of criteria for certification is a necessity for the construction companies, so that they can compete on the market. There are about 15 to 20 different certifications today, and these will be reduced to some, major international certificates.

In addition to companies like Skanska wanting to compete on achieving the best certification for their buildings, tenants also need to follow and understand the certification codes. They drive the market. The green certificates should not be stumbling blocks but stepping stones to building sustainable buildings.”

– Why is it good for business for Skanska to be one of the leading green project developers in the world?

“This is the only way forward. Secondly, this is about future-proofing the value of properties. Companies will need good and green workplaces to attract employees. Investors want green buildings that attract tenants and secure the value of the property in addition to reducing operational costs and the carbon footprint. Existing buildings are not green and therefore we see a great business potential in upgrading those to green, or deep green, as we call the concept that substantially reduces use of energy, water and materials.

Knowing that buildings represent 40% of all CO2 emissions, compared to 30% from the transport sector, how to construct resource efficient buildings will be increasingly important.”

– How are your high aspirations in the green building field received among global investors and lenders?

“Investors and banks have very strong interest in this because being green is regarded as a quality stamp. Investors want products that are ahead of their time. Investing in something which is not green will involve greater and greater financial risk. We will also see an increase in financial institutions having high environmental demands on customers’ project proposals, like what NIB is already doing. The market will increasingly reward green players, and those who lag behind will pay a high price.”