Sweden’s capital city has ambitious twin climate goals: fossil-fuel-free operations and net zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2040. And the construction sector is critical to its success: to meet these targets, more than half of its emissions reductions must come from buildings. The greatest building-related savings will come from heating, as an already efficient citywide district heating grid (covering 80 percent of Stockholm’s structures) shifts to renewable-energy sources. At the individual-building scale, a key strategy requires almost all new construction to achieve net zero carbon by 2030. One indicator of progress to date is the city’s meeting its 2020 emissions milestone two years ahead of schedule, achieving a maximum of 2.2 metric tons per resident in 2018 (down from 2014’s 2.7 ton benchmark). “So, yes,” says Björn Hugosson, Stockholm’s chief climate officer, “the target will be achieved.”
Getting a head start on the 2030 deadline, Stockholm instituted a requirement eight years ago that new residential and commercial buildings on municipal land operate at a maximum 55 kWh/m2, an energy use intensity (EUI) equivalent to the Passive House standard. More than 60 percent of the city’s geographical area is owned by the municipality, and Stockholm Royal Seaport, a 585-acre brownfield development on publicly owned waterfront, represents a leading edge in sustainable urban development worldwide.
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