For the Comfort Hotel Solna project in Sweden, we reduced our CO2 footprint by over 40% compared to industry standard. Our efforts contributed to successfully achieving ambitious environmental goals – House of Choice won in 2021 the BREEAM Building of the year award. To address climate change as building material supplier, we can deliver low-carbon products with major benefits for our customers in terms of sustainability. These solutions are brought together within Green Spine Line®, a certified range of products for low carbon buildings.
Ambitious environmental goals
From Skanska (contractor) to Fabege (developer) to White Arkitekter (architect) to Consolis Strängbetong (frame supplier), all the parties involved set up high climate ambitions since the early stage of the project.
“Already during the planning process, we all needed to assess solutions and create opportunities to reduce further our climate impact. At the same time, we would ensure that the building could reach the goal of zero energy; that it thus produces as much energy as it consumes”, says Marcus Gunnarsson Skoog, Sustainability Manager at Consolis Strängbetong.
Floors with optimized concrete recipe
In this project, we provided hollow-core slabs (long spans elements with great load-bearing capacity) made with a climate-adapted concrete recipe. The new recipes contain an increased proportion of slag and crushed (reused) concrete. We have also increased the water cement ratio from 0.40 to 0.45, which means a reduction in amount of cement. The fact that the concrete contains a higher proportion of water does not affect the drying time or strength. “We have several years of testing behind us that shows that the climate-adapted concrete recipes live up to all quality requirements. Humidity measurements and inspections are also carried out on an ongoing basis during all constructions,” explains Marcus Gunnarsson Skoog.
Certifications benefit global environmental goals
During the construction of Comfort Hotel Solna, requirements were also made by all players to achieve several environmental certifications. The fact that the building contractors are now setting tougher climate requirements is partly due to the fact that there are legal requirements for climate declarations for new buildings in Sweden. To achieve these goals, our climate calculation tools help to quickly calculate the total climate impact of our products.
