Om Ulrikke Nelboe

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So father Ulrikke Nelboe has created 59 blog entries.

The public procurement muscle is far from trained for green requirements

We can remove much more CO2 if we start making green requirements in public procurement. Unfortunately, we do not do that today, and the consequence is that the CO2 emissions from public procurement are increased by 12 per cent. from 2019 to 2021. The increase is primarily driven by supply within construction and construction, and as it looks now, we as min. past 2030, before emissions are expected to fall below 2019 levels. Public procurement therefore currently does not contribute to reaching the 70 percent target.

It should and must be changed. There is a great climate potential in setting green requirements in public tenders - especially within construction and facilities. For example, from 2023 the Norwegian Road Administration has introduced rules for bridges and tunnels which reduce CO2 emissions by up to 60 per cent.

In addition, there is the push in the market for more climate-friendly building materials, which a demand from the public sector will be able to create. It doesn't even have to be an expensive game. According to Tech for Net Zero will climate-neutral construction and construction projects only entail additional costs of between 5-7 per cent. If you transfer it to Danish conditions, it will therefore only cost between DKK 3,1-4,3 billion. DKK per year, to remove CO2 emissions from public construction projects. The extra costs will also fall as green public procurement creates greater demand and thus the volume of green solutions.

Unfortunately, today there are far between green requirements in public tenders. This is evidenced by the increase in the climate footprint from public procurement. Therefore, political action is needed. First of all, a reduction target should be set for public procurement that can ensure that public procurement contributes to Denmark's climate goals.

In the memo "Green Public Procurement - An untapped catalyst for climate reductions in construction and construction" we point to a further eight recommendations that can help to bring public procurement into play to a greater extent in the climate transition of construction and construction. It is important for Danish companies, for our climate and environment and not least to reach the 70 percent target.

This discussion post is listed on the stock exchange on 6 November 2023 og written by Ulrikke Nelboe Møllegård, Advisor in circular construction, Green Transition Denmark.

By |2024-03-20T13:17:56+01:006 November 2023|OP-ED|0 Comments
READ MORE

Circular construction requires far more political action

We have now exceeded six out of nine planetary boundaries. It is a worrying development which shows that the Earth is in total imbalance. One of the major contributors to this development is construction, which with its record high resource and climate footprint is a catalyst for all of the six exceeded planetary boundaries. 

It is therefore crucial that we reverse the enormous environmental, climate and resource footprint that construction has on our planet. And that requires a circular restructuring of construction. 

The cement and concrete industry is the big culprit

One part of the industry that is particularly under pressure to change to become more circular is the cement and concrete industry. If you look at the production of cement alone, it accounts for around five percent of Denmark's total CO2 emissions. At the same time, huge amounts of scarce resources such as sand and gravel are used for the production of cement and concrete. 

According to figures from Statistics Denmark, the material consumption of sand and gravel alone accounted for the whole of Denmark 11,5 ton per inhabitant in 2021. In comparison, the total material consumption in Denmark in 2021 was 24,5 tonnes per inhabitant, and thus the consumption of sand and gravel constitutes as much as 47 percent of the total material consumption in Denmark. 

In other words, the potential for more circularity in the cement and concrete industry is palpable - both in relation to Denmark's resource consumption and our climate footprint.

Unrealized potential for concrete recycling 

However, we are far from circular solutions within cement and concrete today. If you look at the amount of concrete waste that is generated annually, there is a large untapped potential to increase the reuse and recycling of concrete. 

Each year, around 2 million tonnes of concrete waste, and as it stands today, only about half are being registered. This means that just under one million tonnes of concrete waste each year could be included in circular cycles and contribute to reducing the resource footprint of cement and concrete - if it was recorded. 

At the same time, it is estimated that 90 percent of the registered concrete waste is recycled for recovery as a base layer for roads, and is therefore mainly recycled at the lowest level. 

If we hope to increase the circularity of cement and concrete and reduce the high climate and resource footprint, it is therefore important:

  • To reduce the consumption of cement and concrete
  • To ensure that the concrete waste is reused or recycled for the production of new cement and concrete.

Greater political focus on the reuse and recycling of concrete

In order for this to become a reality, however, it is crucial that scalable solutions are developed that can drive the transition to a more circular cement and concrete industry. There are currently neither requirements nor incentives that can ensure the reuse and recycling of concrete. 

At the same time, there is a lack of documentation about the content and properties of concrete elements that can ensure a greater proportion of reuse and recycling of concrete. 

In the Green Transition Denmark, we work in the project 'circular cement and concrete' - which is financed by Realdania - in collaboration with the industry to find solutions and political levers that can accelerate the circular transformation of the cement and concrete industry. Because the industry cannot solve the circular challenge without political action.

There is a need for financial incentives, investment in innovation and clear objectives that can boost the circular development of new value chains and new products. 

And it is not only necessary for the cement and concrete industry, but something that the entire construction industry needs. If you look more broadly at construction, there is thus also a need for a greater political focus, incentives and requirements that can accelerate the transition to circular construction. 

Politically, one should therefore at least start by preparing a long-term strategy for raw materials, resources and circular economy, with a binding reduction target for Denmark's resource consumption. It is a good step on the way to ensuring a better utilization of our precious resources and putting an end to the high climate and resource footprint of construction, which contributes to exceeding the planetary boundaries. 

This debate post was written by Ulrikke Nelboe Møllegård, advisor in Circular construction at the Green Transition Denmark and was published in WasteTech and BuildingTech on 3 October 2023.

By |2024-01-16T14:03:47+01:003. October 2023|OP-ED|0 Comments
READ MORE

Drop food and feed into diesel and petrol

"A large part of the world's supply of important foodstuffs such as wheat, barley and sunflower oil seems to be completely shut down due to the war in Ukraine, which already means higher food prices. Therefore, we recommend that Denmark - initially temporarily - stop using food and feed for biofuels", says Jeppe Juul, Senior Adviser, Climate and Transport at the Green Transition Denmark.

Ukraine and Russia produce 24% of the world's wheat and barley, 15% of corn and over 60% of the globally traded sunflower oil. Already today, sunflower oil is being rationed in German, Spanish and Italian supermarkets, and the price of wheat has risen by around 50% since the beginning of February.

"Biofuels based on food and feed crops make no sense - especially in a food crisis. Crops that can be used as food for humans must not be poured into cars.

Therefore, the use of food and feed for transport fuels must be phased out". says Tarjei Haalund, Energy Policy Advisor at Greenpeace.

The EU Commission issued a statement on Wednesday calling on EU member states to reduce the use of feed and generation biofuels in light of the current crisis. A call that the two environmental organizations can only agree with. At the same time, the electrification of road transport should be accelerated in order to reduce oil consumption and make Denmark and the EU less dependent on imported fossil fuels.

More information

Jeppe Juul, Senior Advisor, Climate and Transport
tel. 33181948

Tarjei Haaland, Climate and energy expert, Greenpeace Denmark
tel. 28109053

By |2022-03-24T13:12:33+01:0024. March 2022|Press release|0 Comments
READ MORE

Webinar "Tax on biomass - why and how?"

Green Transition Denmark held the webinar on March 2Tax on biomass – why and how.' The webinar helped to focus on why we should have a tax on all the biomass we burn in the cogeneration plants and in the stoves, and how such a tax can best be put together. In addition, the webinar focused on the political outlook and how it will affect heating customers.  

The first presentation was presented by Karsten Capion, senior analyst at CONCITO (00:04:01) 

The second presentation was presented by Jette Bredahl Jacobsen, deputy chairman of the Climate Council and professor of environmental and resource economics at the University of Copenhagen (00:17:25) 

The third presentation was presented by Christian Ege, consultant at the Green Transition Denmark (00:33:14) 

The fourth and final presentation was presented by Jesper Koch, head of analysis at Dansk Fjernvarme (00:46:37) 

The debate between the panelists starts at 01:00:49.  

Watch the full webinar below: 

For privacy reasons YouTube needs your permission to be loaded.

By |2022-03-08T12:53:33+01:007. March 2022|Article, News|0 Comments
READ MORE

Two points in particular stand out in the Climate Council's status report

Debate entry published in Klimamonitor on 28 February 2022 by Claus Ekman, director of the Green Transition Denmark.

On Friday, the Climate Council concluded in their annual status report that the government has still not shown the way towards achieving the 70 percent target. It is certainly not a surprising conclusion when you look back on the past year, but it is an important conclusion that should give extra impetus to the political efforts to find concrete and ambitious climate measures here and now.

The report's 200 pages contain, in line with last year's status report, a large number of other elaborate and significant conclusions and recommendations.

Two points in the report stand out, and they record two fundamental challenges in Danish climate policy. One concerns the state's lack of risk management and the other concerns the danger of a one-sided focus on negative emissions.

Risk management

When it comes to risk, the Climate Council in their report has exactly the right focus on uncertainties and the risks that uncertainties create.

It is a focus that is largely absent from the Danish climate policy, and it is a big problem. There is a reason to look carefully at risks. This is known in the private sector, where a great deal of effort is spent on risk assessment and risk management when multibillion dollar investments are made.

By only looking at the outcome that is considered most likely, you overlook all possible other probable outcomes that can be completely destructive to the strategy. In the private sector, that oversight can mean the company's bankruptcy. In Danish climate policy, this can both mean enormous additional costs and a collapse of our climate efforts.

The problem is illustrated, for example, by counting the word risk in the Climate Council's status report and the government's climate programme, respectively. Both are around 200 pages long, but the Climate Council uses the word risk 428 times, while the government settles for only 35.

The government thus underplays the risks inherent in their policy. Concretely, this challenge is decisive when it comes to the government's major investment in carbon capture and storage, CCS – a technology which has not actually been tested in Denmark yet, but which, according to the government, must account for a significant part of CO2- the reduction in 2030.

There is an enormous risk here, which is one of the primary reasons why the Climate Council concludes that the path towards the 70 percent is not foreseeable.

Danish climate policy deserves better, so officials should be given a thorough course in risk management. And then all politicians should be aware that the best estimate is not in itself a sufficiently informed basis on which to build climate policy. Risk assessments are required.

Negative emissions

The other important point is that a one-sided focus on so-called negative emissions is an incredibly dangerous way to go. The fundamental question we should ask ourselves in this context is where the carbon atoms move from and to when we produce, consume and make new climate measures.

In the fossil economy, we take the carbon out of the ground, use the stored energy in the carbon compounds and then emit CO2 into the atmosphere. In a green economy, we ensure a sustainable carbon cycle, where the CO2, we emit into the atmosphere, is absorbed again at the same rate. In a period where we are not yet on track with the green transformation of the economy, or where we can see that CO2-the concentration in the atmosphere becomes too high, it can make good sense to bet on negative emissions.

But the problem arises if this becomes a sleeping pad, so that we do not get to make the necessary reductions, which there is a significant risk of in the Danish case.

With CCS based on imported biomass, we can drain natural carbon stocks in foreign forests at a rate where they cannot be naturally replenished. We then send the imported carbon into our underground, and it counts as negative emissions, meaning that we do not need to make a real green transformation of the Danish economy.

The math looks fine in the officials' excel sheet, especially if you just use best estimates for costs and technology development and don't consider the risk, cf. above. The reality can easily become a delay in the necessary global CO2-reductions that, in addition, undermine the basis of life for many of the species that depend on the natural carbon cycles in the forests.

It is a misfire both in relation to the climate and biodiversity. A mistake that both ministries, experts and politicians choose to turn a blind eye to. Solutions to the challenge include a ban on lifetime-extending CCS on biomass-based power and heating plants, that is, we can capture and store CO2 from relatively new biomass-fired plants, which it is not realistic to shut down for the time being.

But plants that are due to expire in the coming years must be decommissioned and replaced by real renewable energy. At the same time, we must have taxes on biomass and a greater focus on the global consequences of our national investment in CCS.

The status report contains many other good points and also has angles that we in the Green Transition Denmark would have presented differently. But the two most important points are central to the conclusions and recommendations, and the Climate Council should be very grateful for that.

By |2022-02-28T13:32:19+01:0028. February 2022|OP-ED|0 Comments
READ MORE

Green players: The upcoming building directive must be improved if Europe's potential is to be realised

Debate paper presented in the Alting on 25 February 2022 by Christian Jarby, senior adviser in the Green Transition Denmark and Søren Dyck Madsen, senior adviser in Concito.

In the EU, buildings account for approximately 40 percent of energy consumption and approximately 36 percent of CO2 emissions.

Therefore, the EU directive on the energy performance of buildings, also called the building directive, is an important element in the EU's package of directives, which must contribute to meeting the overall EU goal of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 55 percent compared to 1990 the level.

The EU Commission has therefore presented a proposal for a revision of the building directive in December 2021. This plan must now be negotiated between the member states and in the European Parliament, and negotiators for the various groups in the Parliament are being appointed.

In Concito and the Green Transition Denmark, we have reviewed the proposal for a directive from the EU Commission verbatim in order to focus on both shortcomings and opportunities for improvement. And there is a need for a lot of improvements to the draft.

The upcoming political negotiations both must and should deal with this, if the potential that Europe's building stock contains when it comes to energy efficiency and reduction of CO2 emissions is to be realised.

Risk of locked potential
There are several good measures in the proposal presented by the EU Commission. One of the most important is that efforts for energy renovation of existing buildings are strengthened.

It does this, among other things, by setting forward-looking minimum requirements for energy-related improvement of the worst of the existing buildings, requirements for national action plans for renovation efforts, etc.

However, it is inappropriate that it is proposed to move only the worst existing buildings with a single energy class, for example from G to F.

There is a risk that it locks up the potential for the building in question to be renovated to energy class F from G to E and possibly even better.

In addition, financially vulnerable users of these buildings must be protected, and consideration must be given to safeguarding buildings particularly worthy of preservation.

Unfortunately, a number of absolutely necessary efforts are still missing in the draft of a revised building directive. For example, the proposal contains requirements for calculating the climate impact of buildings, but there are no actual requirements for reducing the climate effect from the building materials used.

This is despite the fact that a large part of the climate effect from new construction in particular can be related to the embedded CO2 in the building materials used.

The Building Directive takes on great importance
There is also a lack of regulation of the construction site's energy consumption and material waste. This should be rectified by introducing provisions which ensure that the member states begin to set requirements for the overall climate impact of construction, as is currently planned in Denmark.

Another inappropriateness of the directive is that buildings and their supply of renewable energy are regulated as if the buildings were not an integral part of the overall energy system. That should be corrected.

Buildings' energy needs cannot be regulated as individual islands, but must be regulated in interaction with the entire energy system.

Søren Dyck-Madsen and Christian Jarby, senior consultant at Concito and senior advisor at the Green Transition Denmark

For example, there is a lack of opportunities for buildings' energy needs to be met from renewable energy produced in the electricity system instead of, as suggested in the directive, produced on or near the building.

The building directive will have great significance for the future regulation of construction in Denmark and not least in the rest of the EU. Therefore, it is also necessary that the directive is designed with foresight and with as great an effect as possible in relation to reducing the climate impact of buildings.

At the same time, the directive must take into account the many purposes a building has. Also in relation to delivering healthy buildings with a good indoor climate, long durability and high quality.

By |2024-01-29T11:43:27+01:0025. February 2022|OP-ED|0 Comments
READ MORE

Need for improvements in the revision of the building directive

Buildings account for approx. 40 percent of energy consumption and approx. 36 percent of CO2 emissions in the EU. Therefore, the EU Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings, also called the building directive, is an important element in the EU's package of directives, which must contribute to meeting the overall EU target of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 55% compared to 1990.

Against this background, on 15 December 2021, the EU Commission presented a proposal for a revision of the Building Directive. This plan must now be negotiated between the member states and in the European Parliament.

In CONCITO's and the Green Transition Denmark's project Buildings and Green Transition, a commentary has been prepared on the proposal from the EU Commission to inform about challenges, shortcomings and opportunities for improvement.

It is positive that efforts for energy renovation are being strengthened

There are several good measures in the EU Commission's proposal as it stands. One of the most important is that efforts for energy renovation of existing buildings are strengthened, among other things by setting forward-looking minimum requirements for energy-related improvement of the worst of the existing buildings, requirements for national action plans for renovation efforts, etc.

The climate impact from building materials is overlooked

Unfortunately, a number of absolutely necessary efforts are still missing in the draft of a revised Building Directive. The proposal, for example, does not contain requirements for the climate effect from used building materials. This despite the fact that a large part of the climate effect from new construction in particular can be related to the embedded CO2 in the building materials used. In addition, there is also a lack of regulation of the construction site's energy consumption and material waste.

Buildings must be seen as an integral part of the energy system

Another inappropriateness of the directive is that buildings and their supply of renewable energy are regulated as if the buildings were not an integral part of the overall energy system. This should be rectified, as buildings' energy needs cannot be regulated as individual islands, but must be regulated in interaction with the entire energy system. For example, there is a lack of opportunity for buildings' energy needs to be met from renewable energy produced in the electricity system.

The building directive will have great significance for the future regulation of construction in Denmark, and not least in the rest of the EU. Therefore, it is also necessary that the directive is designed with as great an effect as possible in terms of reducing the climate impact of buildings. At the same time that the directive must take into account the many purposes a building has, also in relation to delivering healthy buildings with a good indoor climate, long durability and high quality.

Read more in the in-depth commentary on the directive here: Commentary note

The Buildings and Green Transition project is carried out jointly by CONCITO and the Green Transition Denmark. Read more about the project here

By |2022-02-08T11:19:54+01:007. February 2022|Comment|0 Comments
READ MORE

Shipping should report their emissions of soot particles

No pollution should be invisible, and therefore the shipping industry should begin to calculate their emissions of soot particles in their environmental accounts. The calculation of emissions of soot particles will give a more accurate picture of shipping pollution, which will benefit both the climate and public health. That's what senior advisor Kåre Press-Kristensen from the Council from Green Transition says.

"It makes no sense that shipping's emissions of soot particles are not registered in the shipping companies' environmental accounts. Seen over a 20-year time perspective, soot particles from shipping are responsible for approx. 20% of global warming from shipping, and therefore it is extremely important that shipping's pollution is fairly accounted for, so that we can make the emission of soot particles visible and regulated," says Kåre Press-Kristensen.

Maersk is at the forefront of the industry

The Danish shipping company Maersk has just announced that they will start reporting their emissions of soot particles in their environmental accounts. In doing so, Maersk is at the forefront of the industry as the first shipping company in the world to give a true picture of their pollution, and that decision is praised by the Green Transition Denmark.

"It is really positive that Maersk, as the first shipping company in the world, will now start reporting their emissions of soot particles, and I very much hope that other progressive shipping companies soon follow suit," says Kåre Press-Kristensen and continues:

"Once the emission of soot particles has been calculated across the shipping companies, the shipping companies will hopefully also begin to reduce emissions via energy savings, cleaner fuels and particle filters for the benefit of public health and the climate."

For example, by switching from heavy to light bunker oil, shipping can reduce the release of soot particles by 30-40%, and if particle filters are installed at the same time, it can reduce pollution by over 98%.

For more information
Kåre Press-Kristensen, senior advisor specializing in air quality & climate, tel. 22811027.

By |2022-02-03T13:48:51+01:003. February 2022|Press release|0 Comments
READ MORE

Contact

Green Transition Denmark
Kompagnistræde 22, 3
1208 Copenhagen K
Denmark

CVR: 15428376

Find staff

Privacy Policy

info@rgo.dk

Support the green and sustainable transition

Disclaimer: This website has been translated using automated translation software powered by third-party services. We will continuously make efforts to improve the translations from Danish.

Do you want to follow our work?

A fast path to green knowledge!

Go to Top