Greenland's Strategy on Sustainable Construction and Nordic Circular Summit

The vision is to develop sustainable and innovative solutions that reflect Greenland’s culture and support local communities, contribute to a better climate and environment, and take responsibility by actively participating in global developments.

The goals include establishing a joint forum in the construction sector for dialogue and cooperation on sustainability and preparing an action plan for reducing CO₂ emissions in the sector. Initiatives have already started, with creating a national DGNB system and establishing a shared methodology for LCA calculations. Future initiatives include, among others, establishing a Council for Sustainability within the construction sector and prepare an action plan for reducing CO2 emissions in the sector.

What knowledge from Nordic Sustainable Construction is relevant in a Greenlandic perspective?

The department for Housing and Construction in Greenland is initiator of an establish network “QAPIUT” for public civil servants involved in building case processing from the five municipalities in Greenland. The purpose is to ensure the development of competencies through knowledge and experience sharing as well as sparring on the challenges that may arise when solving daily tasks. The network meets four times a year and once physically.

As the discussion on what sustainable construction is in Greenland is emerging as part of the strategy, the department had invited Nordic Sustainable Construction to take part in the workshop to get inspiration from what the other Nordic countries are working on regarding sustainable construction and to hear current developments in Greenland. Nordic Sustainable Construction shared some of the knowledge created from 2021 to 2024 regarding methodologies for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and place based architecture. Furthermore, Nordic Sustainable Construction elaborated on the current focus on how to optimise the use of existing buildings and opportunities for reuse including the education material www.skills4reuse.com.

A key focus in Greenland is the need for renovation to maintain the existing building stock in the Greenlandic weather. Therefore, as part of the workshop for the network QAPIUT, participants visited a testing pilot project of renovating with a new method adapted to the Greenlandic society and climate. Here, parts of the building envelope are replaced with prefabricated elements directly on site. This approach allows residents to remain in their homes during renovation. It makes it easier to renovate older buildings, of which many suffer from leaks in roofs, doors, windows, and envelopes, without the need for rehousing, which has previously been unavoidable.

Read more about the testing pilot project here.

Nordic Circular Summit

At the same time, the Nordic Circular Summit took place in Nuuk. The Summit was hosted by Nordic Circular Hotspot, a network working towards accelerating the transition to a sustainable and circular economy in the Nordic countries. The theme was: How can the Arctic and Nordic regions lead the transition to circular systems – connecting digitalisation, infrastructure and mobility with circular construction and adaptive reuse?

The sessions explored how cities and regions can act as living laboratories for sustainable innovation, combining policy frameworks, built environment strategies, and collaboration across the Nordic countries. Nordic Sustainable Construction participated and presented what the Nordic countries are joining forces on to minimise the negative impact on climate and environment. The two session were:

• Circular regions and cities (view the recording here)
• From Pilots to Practice: Next Steps to Scale Circular Construction in the Nordics (view the recording here)

The circular construction session, which brought together three perspectives: a Nordic market view, an Icelandic practice-based view, and a policy and collaboration view from the programme itself.

Jan Thomas Odegard, from Natural Estate, provided a Nordic market perspective. He emphasised the need for regulatory measures so that reusing materials does not remain more expensive and complicated than buying new ones. He pointed out that the value chain is fragmented and most reuse hubs are small and fragile. He also presented the development of a Nordic circular product, and solutions catalogue and a proposal for a Market Accelerator Programme that connects suppliers, clients, cities and investors.

Anna Karlsdóttir, from Lúdika Architects, presented an Icelandic practice perspective. She highlighted the future goals in Iceland of recycling 95% of construction and demolition waste and cutting 30% of waste per square metre by 2030. Her work experiments with biobased and local materials to create a more circular and place-based construction culture rooted in Iceland’s geology and ecology.

Nordic Sustainable Construction presented its work within the Circularity Work Package, which focuses on renovation and lifetime extension over demolition, establish methods for assessing reused materials and strengthen construction skills through the Skills4Reuse education material. A key output will be a catalogue of policy measures to support more circular construction practices across the Nordics. Dive deeper into the three work packages in the programme here: Climate, Circularity and EU.  

Together, these perspectives illustrated how circular construction is being advanced across the Nordic region and how they connect to the broader goals to accelerate the green, circular and digital transition of the built environment.