Understanding building sustainability - the case of Sweden

Sustainability reports constitute a good source to check how companies have understood sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to interpret how building sustainability has been understood, defined and measured, using sustainability reports from the building value chain in Sweden. Sweden has been chosen since it is rated as a sustainability leader and could therefore be expected to be a benchmark. The analyses are based on how sustainability has been defined and what the level of reporting maturity has been. A maturity grid that assesses if the most important impacts have been considered in the entire value chain has been used. Also, it has been checked if there are indicators measuring sustainability with externally set goals. Results indicate that there seems to be no common agreement on what building sustainability is. Most studied companies have not presented a clear definition of how they have interpreted sustainable development and there is no clear focus on key issues such as climate and affordability. Sustainable building could, based on the deduced main sustainability impacts, be seen as affordable with zero carbon footprint. Fundamental Key Performance Indicators for residential building sustainability could be such as m(2) living per carbon footprint and per price.