It’s one thing for a company to set ambitious goals around emissions reduction. It’s another altogether for them to bite the bullet and take the actions needed to achieve those goals.
With the built environment accounting for some 40 percent of global energy-related carbon emissions, responsible construction companies need to do more than make promises. They need to get to work achieving decarbonization through measures like strategic materials selection, transitioning to sustainable fuels and the use of renewable energy.
That’s why last year our Skanska USA Building business unit released its most comprehensive climate plan to date. The Skanska US Building Climate Transition Plan outlines how the business unit will contribute to our overall global climate target. This target is to achieve an industry leading 70-percent reduction of Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2045. Sustainability has long been in our DNA and it’s also integrated into our business strategy. We believe innovative climate solutions are necessary to transform our industry and to power continued responsible growth.
With this in mind, here are five best practices that we’ve implemented within sustainability. We invite companies across all sectors to consider adopting and adapting them in order to achieve their own sustainability goals:
- Transition company-owned vehicles to near-zero emissions and convert to alternative fuels for all non-road equipment.
We recently completed environmental consultancy Breaking Barrier’s Collaborative’s Fleet Decarbonization Accelerator program and took delivery of our first four all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning pickup trucks. We will continue to add electric and renewable fuel vehicles to our fleet in 2025. In addition, we have sourced renewable diesel in four western US states and have seen the price reach equilibrium with fossil diesel, improving our purchasing power. We continue to educate teams and equipment suppliers about the important differences between renewable diesel and biodiesel. We’re also informing them on how renewable diesel can be used alone or blended with diesel at any proportion, making adoption easy. That’s important because renewable diesel reduces tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions significantly. That, in turn, means cleaner air for people operating and working near heavy equipment that uses this fuel, and cleaner air for the communities in which we build. - Invest in sustainable workspaces for field teams
We have designed and are manufacturing off-grid, healthier, low-carbon mobile jobsite offices. Three Zero-Emission Resilient Office (ZERO+)* units have entered production and will soon be deployed to project sites in Massachusetts, Arizona and Florida. They will provide more sustainable and equitable workspaces for our field teams and reduce our use of diesel generators and grid-tied electricity. The robust construction of these units will significantly extend their expected lifetime, eliminate the waste generated from sending obsolete trailers to landfills, and reduce the overall embodied carbon footprint. - Maintain enrollment in Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) programs
We teamed up with Schneider Electric for our 2024 Renewable Energy Certificate program. In 2024, we expanded the program to cover power consumption at our jobsites as well as our permanent offices. Additionally, we directed our REC investment to a location in Texas that serves a major steel fabrication facility. This provides an additional benefit of reducing the embodied carbon of the steel we purchase from that location by delivering more clean power into the local grid. Several of our major customers are asking for their vendors to purchase renewable energy, and we are pleased to be able to offer this benefit to customer supply chains. - Invest in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)
In 2023, we partnered with Alaska Airlines to purchase the airline’s sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). This made us the first general contractor in the US to invest in SAF with the airline. In 2024, we furthered our investment in SAF by integrating the ability to purchase the environmentally preferred option into our travel booking software. This means when team members travel they will be able to do so knowing that their ticket has supported the growth of sustainable aviation fuel. - Expand tracking and reporting of Scope 3 materials
Scope 3 materials are those that we purchase and install on our projects that have impacts due to the energy taken to extract, manufacture, transport and install them. We have begun expanding the tracking of key materials from beyond just our Commercial Development projects to include all work we self-perform. In the coming years, this will further expand to products beyond steel, concrete and asphalt. The industry has focused first on these materials due to their quantity and carbon intensity.
In addition to our US Building Climate Transition Plan, our company helps clients achieve their own climate goals, and provides industry-leading education on sustainability. We chaired the task force that wrote the AGC Playbook on Decarbonization and Carbon Reporting in the Construction Industry, a guide designed to help contractors address greenhouse gas emissions for the projects they build. The playbook provides contractors with tools to communicate effectively with project teams and successfully navigate the complexities of carbon reporting for a project. It describes a process for identifying accountability as well as what to track and report. In addition, the playbook offers a host of industry-identified strategies and tips for reducing carbon emissions from their projects.
While we’re proud of the progress we’ve made, we still have much work to do. Whether you work in construction or any another field, every company should have a climate plan and be talking about and acting on ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Hopefully, these best practices can serve as inspiration for potential ways to address decarbonization in your organization as we head into 2025 and beyond.
A version of this article was originally published in The Portland Business Journal.
*The Zero Emission Resilient Office (ZERO+) is a first of its kind mobile office solution, manufactured in the USA by Xtreme Cubes, designed to provide a temporary workplace that’s more sustainable, resilient and healthy than a conventional trailer. Stay tuned for more information.
