Can business-driven and climate-based contracting of bridges make us build climate-smarter?

Paper in proceeding, 2025

Today, it is not possible to question the construction industry's impact on the environment. Vast amounts of resources are extracted, and high amounts of waste are generated. The energy consumption in material extraction, production of building materials and elements, transport, and construction activities sums up to 15% of the global emissions. The construction industry's market-driven nature and regulatory requirements set by Administration bodies define the playground for implementing activities that aim to reduce climate impact. International industry associations point out that minimising the material volume is a low-hanging fruit and research shows that this is prosperous. Still, implementation is slow.
This paper argues for and discusses three paradoxes regarding why climate-smart work is slow in implementation and how business-driving aspects obstruct building climate-smart. The argumentation is developed from a perspective that the people-profit-planet unity needs to be considered in balance, in general, and that the profit-planet unity needs to be considered in tandem for market-driven and climate-based contracting, especially. Even though it is tempting to say that we should stop building, it is not feasible for a developing Society. The question is how we can design and build smarter.
The conclusion of this work is that the sector needs to address current procurement strategies that are short-term profit-oriented, understand how upstream decisions obstruct climate-smart solutions, and use digital working procedures and tools to leverage the available information in early project stages. At the bottom-line, to make climate a competitive factor in the construction industry is imperative for a climate transformation of the sector.