Our Lena Hök met government and corporate leaders at COP28, including Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (pictured)
As part of the Business Sweden delegation, our leadership stressed the importance of two industry-specific solutions at the forum: driving sustainability requirements in public procurement and increasing global standardization.
Public procurement
In our COP28 press release, our EVP for Sustainability and Innovation Lena Hök shared an important message for the public sector.
"It is time for municipalities, cities, and nations to raise the level of their emission-reduction ambitions,” she said. “The importance of this cannot be stressed enough. Public procurement incorporating clear sustainability requirements is a crucial factor for success in driving the market transformation and decarbonizing the built environment.”
How are we contributing to this market transformation? Listen to our Shaping Sustainable Places podcast episode featuring leaders from one of our largest public sector projects, High Speed Two, a railway project currently under construction in the UK.
Global standardization
Standardization in reporting and sustainable certifications like LEED and BREEM is another important area for progress in the climate transition.
In the live panel discussion hosted by Business Sweden, Positive Tipping Points – Bridging the Gap Between the Latest Science, Negotiations and Solutions, Lena Hök credited third-party verification in helping us achieve 100 percent sustainability-linked funding.
"We have been collaborating a lot within our industry to be part of developing relevant, credible and measurable standards,” she said. “One hundred percent of our external funding is now sustainability-linked. Without external verification of our work and performance, we would never have achieved that level.”
Our participation in global events like COP28 aims to raise expectations of what our industry can achieve to support decarbonization. This can only be realized through applying proven sustainable solutions at the public level and setting global sustainability standards that are independently verified.
To learn more, tune in to our podcast, Shaping Sustainable Places, where we discuss how we, the broader industry and global society are shaping a sustainable future. Subscribe now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, as Season 2 is launching soon.