Asker municipality theme plan

‍Asker municipality's first emissions-free construction site (Source: Asker Municipality)

‍Asker municipality's first emissions-free construction site (Source: Asker Municipality)

, a separate focus area in the community part of the municipal plan, states that Asker municipality shall require that construction and construction activities carried out on commission for the municipality shall be emission-free from 2025.

Asker municipality launches its first emission-free construction project Føyka-Elvely started in October 2020 with demands for 20% emission-free operation within the building fence. Furthermore, the project had a goal of using emission-free construction equipment so that overall emissions within the plant area were reduced by 50% compared to conventional plant operations. To achieve this, Asker municipality set several contract requirements that the selected contractor had to follow. The main contractual requirements with regard to reducing emissions from construction machinery was:

• Fossil-free construction equipment and vehicles
  All machinery, equipment and heating used on the building/construction site shall be fossil-free.
• Requirements for emission-free machines
  At least 20% of non-road machinery on the site shall be free of local emissions. The energy carrier for the machines can be electricity from the grid, battery or fuel cell.
  The proportion is calculated based on machine hours.

The project received support from Environment Agency's Climate Rate Scheme, which meant the need for documentation of the additional costs associated with the use of emission-free machines. The chosen supplier therefore had to comply with the requirements and help document that the target had been reached. Therefore, in order to document the contract requirement set to percentage machine hours, requirements were also set for the use of:

• System for measuring and reporting energy consumption

According to the head of the main committee community services (2019-2023) in Asker municipality, Elisabeth Holter-Schøyen The Føyka-Elvely project achieved 30% emission-free operation.

Anchoring
Asker municipality has for a long time been working on reducing emissions from machinery and vehicles at construction sites in the municipality:

• 2015: Requirement for renewable diesel only on Asker operating its own machines and vehicles
• 2017: Asker joined Joint initiative for emission-free construction sites
• 2018: Climate plan with a requirement for fossil-free and emissions-free construction phase in all municipal projects from 2025
• 2020: Framework contract for contractor services with emission-free machines

In addition, in 2021, the municipality gained in place Climate strategy with a requirement for emissions-free construction sites by 2025.

Continuation and other projects

• The Føyka-Elvely project was first followed up with an environmental project in Brickworks Road where the municipality tried to procure with a premium for emission-free but where only offers were received with smaller electrical machines, which was considered to have little exploited potential.
• In collaboration with ANEO received the municipality Enova Financing for Charging Container which have been moved around in various construction projects where electricity and power access in the municipality can be challenging, including in Storengveien on Nesøya — see the “Data-driven reporting” section below.
• In April 2024, the municipality concluded its first circular construction project. In addition to being one of the first to test FutureBuild's circularity index, the construction site has been completed with approximately 90% emission-free construction equipment.

Data-driven reporting
On Nesøya, Asker municipality has renewed parts of the water and wastewater network, almost completely emission-free. Here, battery containers and fast chargers have been used to supply the construction machines with the electricity they need. Along with Fremby Asker municipality has developed a base for data-driven reporting from the construction machines. In this way, you can keep track of which machines are at the plant at all times, as well as how many hours they have passed, fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It makes it easier to report and document greenhouse gas reductions.

Experiences
There are many challenges and opportunities in emission-free construction and construction operations. Although the projects that have been completed are relatively small, the implementation of the projects has provided a lot of learning. The municipality's experiences throughout the period are that:

• The market has evolved a lot
• Still very high costs and other limitations
• Environmental and climate objectives in construction projects are important to achieve technological development, but there is a large cost that must be weighed against other measures in the municipality
• Cost/benefit policy priorities for each project

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