Improving energy and carbon management in construction and civil engineering companies—evaluating the impacts of the CO2 Performance Ladder

Abstract

In the Netherlands, the CO 2 Performance Ladder has been introduced as an energy management programme to facilitate continuous energy efficiency and carbon performance improvement in non-industrial sectors. This paper addresses the question: 'What is the impact of the CO 2 Performance Ladder on improving energy and carbon management and reducing CO 2 emissions in construction and civil engineering firms'. The research was based on interviews, descriptive analysis of energy efficiency and CO 2 emission reduction measures and quantitative analysis of CO 2 emission reductions. The research results indicate that the CO 2 Performance Ladder has improved various energy management practices at administrative level, while internalization of energy management practices at lower levels in the organization has just gradually started. Companies have implemented a wide range of new energy efficiency and CO 2 emission reduction measures. However, most measures only affected supporting business processes instead of companies' core processes. About 30-50 % of these measures have been identified as additional. Green electricity purchasing and the adoption of behavioural measures were particularly stimulated. The annual CO 2 emission reduction rate due to energy efficiency improvement and fuel switching amounted to 3.2 %/year (2010)(2011)(2012)(2013). First estimates suggest that about 1.0-1.6 %/year of these CO 2 emission reductions can be attributed to the CO 2 Performance Ladder. However, these figures should be handled with caution because of various uncertainties. Overall, we conclude that, driven by the potential competitive advantage in contract awarding, the CO 2 Performance Ladder has been responsible for improving energy management and enhancing CO 2 emission reduction among construction and civil engineering firms, which most likely would not have been achieved otherwise.

Deploying Low Carbon Public Procurement to Accelerate Carbon Removal

“…This early innovation, combined with the fact that concrete is the most widely used human-made material in the world, makes it the most immediate and scalable engineered technology pathway for mineralizing industrial CO 2 , whether captured from industrial point sources or from CDR sources such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. Still, many emerging concrete CO 2 mineralization technologies are immature and not yet commercially deployed (Ravikumar et al, 2021). This sector therefore presents a crossroads of opportunities: the ability to achieve public decarbonization commitments and support scaling of technologies through the procurement of materials that are already needed for planned infrastructure expansion and renewal.…”

Designing and implementing procurement requirements for carbon reduction in infrastructure construction – international overview and experiences

“…In the Netherlands, the main road and waterways client Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) and the Dutch Public Procurement Expertise Center PIANOo have developed the CO 2 Performance Ladder certification scheme (for a description, see Rietbergen, Opstelten, and Blok 2017). Companies may be certified on five levels based on their management efforts and systems to reduce carbon caused by their internal activities and processes.…”

“…In the case of the Dutch CO 2 performance ladder, the 5% weighting assigned to this criterion was sufficient to incentivize contractors to invest in carbon management competence to obtain certifications. However, this award criterion no longer discriminates between tenders, since all suppliers are now on the same level (see also Rietbergen, Opstelten, and Blok 2017), illustrating the dynamic interaction over time between demand side requirements and market maturity (Brammer and Walker 2011;Uyarra et al 2017;Wanzenb€ ock et al 2019). In several cases, innovation processes were adapted to the limits set by competition concerns.…”

Overcoming the efficiency gap: energy management as a means for overcoming barriers to energy efficiency, empirical support in the case of Austrian large firms

“…One of these very few welfare-efficient instruments to overcome the efficiency gap has been proposed by Backlund et al (2012aBacklund et al ( , 2012b and Fawcett et al (2019) as good energy management practices such as those prescribed in ISO 50001 (ISO, 2011) andISO 14001 (ISO, 2015). These management frameworks have been shown to generate in aggregate 1% to 1.6% of additional savings by Rietbergen et al (2017). Anderson and Newell (2004) find that within government-sponsored energy audits focusing on low-hanging fruits, firms implemented about half of the recommended measures.…”