Lena Hök, Executive Vice President for Sustainability and Innovation at Skanska, explains how being a forerunner on sustainability has helped it set industry standards and win customers. ...
With a raft of new legislation set to make climate-related disclosures mandatory for a large swathe of companies worldwide, many firms are waking up to the urgent need to ramp up their reporting and information sharing.
According to CDP, a nonprofit that operates a global disclosure system for investors, companies, and governments to track their environmental impact, the number of firms voluntarily disclosing their climate performance jumped 24% in 2023 compared to a year earlier.
For Sweden’s Skanska, however, carbon disclosure has long been a part of its corporate DNA. The construction and project development company first started disclosing information about its environmental impact in 1997, giving it a decades-long head start on how to identify the areas it could have the greatest impact when it comes to emissions.
“Being an engineering company, you do measure what matters. And for us, carbon matters when it comes to our environmental footprint,” explains Lena Hök, who has served as Executive Vice President of Sustainability and Innovation since 2021.
Skanska has set ambitious targets, aiming to slash the CO2 emissions from its operations by 70% by 2030 and reduce those in its value chain from its developed projects by 50%. It aims to achieve net zero by 2045 – no small feat for a firm that operates in the built environment sector which accounts for roughly 40% of the global emissions.
To keep the organization on track, Skanska is constantly talking about its sustainability targets alongside its financial goals. All its business units across various markets are required to develop tailored climate plans that identify key activities and focus on awareness and capability training, adds Hök.
For example, Skanska developed a tool for the US market, which lacked ways to measure the climate and carbon footprint of different materials.
Being able to measure its carbon impact doesn’t only just put it on the right side of regulators and investors. It has also helped the company play a key role in shaping industry-wide environmental standards, says Hök.
Crucially, it also helps propose solutions to customers, who not only want to use the most cost-effective materials but also the ones that produce the least carbon.
For example, Skanska developed a tool for the US market, which lacked ways to measure the climate and carbon footprint of different materials. By transferring knowledge from Sweden to their US colleagues, it started to build a database with more than 10,000 environmental product declarations.
Today the Embodied Construction Carbon Calculator contains more than 100,000 environmental product declarations in its database and since it’s open source, everyone – from material providers, designers, architects, or competitors – can use the tool to see in the planning or design phase, how the choice of materials impacts project’s carbon footprint.
“When it comes to measuring impact, we have understood how vital that knowledge and expertise is within Skanska is and how important it is to use it to guide customers in the very early stages of a project when you set the design because that’s where it can really make a difference,” says Hök.
By understanding the various design options and their environmental impact, Skanska has been able to make projects more efficient by reducing materials and cutting carbon and costs. This saves money for customers, especially if they are going to own a building for a long time, she adds.
Another area of focus for Skanska is reducing the energy used during the construction phase.
Alongside the materials used to construct a building, another key driver of emissions in the built environment is the energy it takes to operate a building over its lifetime. Skanska has collaborated with other companies on Powerhouse, which constructs ‘energy positive’ buildings that produce more energy than they consume.
Another area of focus for Skanska is reducing the energy used during the construction phase. It has taken measures to electrify the heavy machinery that it uses on construction sites. This not only limits emissions but can also reduce the amount of noise and air pollution, particularly when working on projects in densely populated areas such as the LA or Stockholm metro systems.
Lastly, Hök believes there is a lot more potential to make buildings ‘smarter’ by managing the water and electricity efficiency through sensors and using technology to develop a feedback loop so that you can see how buildings are being used.
She also works closely with public affairs since a large part of the regulation facing firms today concerns sustainability.
To make sure that Skanska learns from its expertise across projects and different markets, it has created internal knowledge hubs focused on sustainability and innovation, such as on AI or low-carbon materials
It also seeks to learn and share knowledge externally from industry leaders and sustainability champions through its podcast “Shaping Sustainable Places” where it explores innovative solutions to real challenges.
“We have a wide value chain, and it’s important to be able to integrate all those competencies because no single solution is enough. We need to be able to combine a lot of different solutions,” says Hök.
Hök stays on top of industry trends and changing regulations by belonging to networks such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the IMD Chief Sustainability Officers circle where she can share and learn from the challenges faced by others. She also works closely with public affairs since a large part of the regulation facing firms today concerns sustainability.
As a leader within Skanska, she values the knowledge spread across her team and is mindful of making sure the organization is making the most of the “collective intelligence” of the sustainability officers spread across its different markets.
“The way I think of collective intelligence is that you dare to share; that you share challenges, that you are also bragging or sharing opportunities, successes, and that you’re curious about it and not just curious, but also that you’re actually applying it and scaling it.”
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