Reduction Roadmap 3.0: 4.6 kg CO2e/m2/year climate cap in 2027 aligns with Paris Agreement
The climate impact threshold for new construction will be renegotiated in 2026. As co-founders of the Non-Profit Association Reduction Roadmap, CEBRA calls on the Danish Authority of Social Services and Housing to align the threshold with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target in 2027.
At the Danish Parliament, discussions are underway on the threshold for the climate impact of buildings in the Danish Building Regulations from 2027 onwards. The political agreement on the National Strategy for Sustainable Construction states that the threshold must be “set on the basis of the latest knowledge and data”. The updated Reduction Roadmap 3.0, led by CEBRA, Artelia, and EFFEKT, provides precisely this evidence base, clearly showing that the construction sector’s remaining carbon budget has fallen significantly.
Version 3.0 is based on the latest estimates of the remaining global carbon budget. According to Reduction Roadmap 3.0, the average threshold for the climate impact of new construction must not exceed 4.6 kg CO2e/m2/year in 2027 if the Danish construction sector is to contribute to align with the Paris Agreement and the Danish Climate Act and limit global warming to 1.5°C with a 50% probability.
According to Reduction Roadmap 3.0, the average threshold for the climate impact of new construction must not exceed 4.6 kg CO2e/m2/year in 2027 if the Danish construction sector is to contribute to aligning with the Paris Agreement and the Danish Climate Act and limit global warming to 1.5°C with a 50% probability.
“The new Danish government has stated that it intends to be Denmark’s greenest government and raise the country’s climate ambitions. The roadmap documents that a threshold of 4.6 is scientifically justified. Reduction Roadmap translates the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target into specific thresholds for the climate impact of construction. We therefore look forward to the dialogue on the climate cap, where a transparent evidence base will demonstrate what the government’s climate ambitions mean for the construction sector in practice,” says Steffen Maagaard of Artelia, one of the organisations behind the Reduction Roadmap Association alongside CEBRA and EFFEKT.
Climate requirements for new construction remain far from a Paris-aligned pathway
Although the climate requirements for new construction have gradually been tightened, they still fall short of the level that climate science considers necessary to keep the construction sector’s emissions within a Paris-aligned pathway.
When the Danish Authority of Social Services and Housing set the threshold at 7.1 kg CO2e/m2/year in 2025, it chose a level substantially above the 5.8 kg CO2e/m2/year indicated by Reduction Roadmap’s evidence base. More than 630 municipalities, developers, investors, consultants and companies called on the government to bring the Danish Building Regulations into line with the Paris Agreement. Despite this broad industry support for stricter climate requirements, the final regulations did not fully reflect the recommendations for a 50 % reduction. Nevertheless, this broad coalition played a decisive role in reducing the threshold by 40 %.
The Danish Authority of Social Services and Housing’s proposal for the anticipated next round of tightening points to a threshold of 6.4 kg CO2e/m2/year in 2027. The Reduction Roadmap 3.0 calculations show that the proposed 6.4 climate requirements for 2026–2030 would allow new construction to emit 85 % more CO2 than the sector can afford if global warming is to be limited to 1.5°C.
“So the question is not whether the transition will be demanding. The question is how we choose to respond to the challenge. We can either actively transform the construction sector in line with the planet’s needs or deal later with the consequences of exceeding its limits,” says Mikkel Schlesinger, Partner at CEBRA.
The key questions facing the industry
The updated Reduction Roadmap shows that there is still an opportunity to bring construction into alignment with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target in 2027, although doing so will be demanding. It also makes the consequences of the current trajectory clear: with an 85 % overshoot, the construction sector would actively contribute to a warming scenario closer to 2°C.
“So the question is not whether the transition will be demanding. The question is how we choose to respond to the challenge. We can either actively transform the construction sector in line with the planet’s needs or deal later with the consequences of exceeding its limits.”, Partner, CEBRA
This raises several questions for the industry:
If we exceed the construction sector’s carbon budget, how will we repay the carbon debt we accumulate while still achieving the 1.5°C target, and how will the industry shoulder its share of responsibility? What role should renovation, adaptive reuse, life extension and sufficiency play in the future of construction? If fewer new square metres are built, how might this affect the carbon thresholds set for new construction? What policy frameworks and incentives are needed to make the best solutions for the climate the easiest choices?
“The roadmap does not provide all the answers, but it identifies the questions that we as an industry need to address, and which we will continue to explore in the next phase of the project,” says Sinus Lynge of EFFEKT.
Over the coming months, the team behind Reduction Roadmap will present the findings to the Danish Authority of Social Services and Housing, as well as key industry organisations and stakeholders, to discuss how the construction sector can navigate the necessary changes.
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