Carbon dioxide emissions have long proven to be one of the greenhouse gases that affect our planet's climate and environment. With the upcoming EU targets and Sweden's own net zero targets, the construction and real estate sector is required to work with climate-smart materials to construct the buildings of the future. The net zero target for year 2045 requires a joint pool of power from all companies to find innovative solutions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how conscious and active the construction and real estate sector is for climate-smart concrete through a survey and comparison of different typ of concretes EPDs. The work aims to investigate how far the development has taken place and to investigate how the market has adopted the new products that are available. The purpose was also to investigate which alternative additives are most common and the advantages and disadvantages of the climate-smart concrete. Climate smart is a term for concrete that contains a lower percentage of Portland cement clinker than the traditional concrete.

A questionnaire was created to answer the purpose of the study. The survey sent out involved questions about how companies view the new environmental target for year 2045. As well as investigating how the construction and real estate sector works together to achieve the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 85% less than in year 1990. A comparison was made between three different EPDs of climate-smart concrete and two reference concrete with ordinary Portland cement clinker. Reference concrete one is a standard value derived from previous studies made and reference concrete two is an EPD value. This was done to investigate the amount of carbon dioxide they emit at the production stage. A reference building was used to calculate the amount of concrete. The result shows that the comparison between reference concrete one with the standard value and the three climate-smart concrete from Svensk Betong, Betongindustrin and Swerock gives a carbon dioxide reduction of 29.3%. And the comparison with reference concrete two with the associated EPD value received a percent climate reduction of only 2.8%.

The future will require the construction and real estate industry to invest time and training to work with climate-smart concrete. More in-depth work could be explored and mapped as to which are the major obstacles in construction projects. How companies can work to get the entire value chain to work together for a climate-smart thinking and primarily to get the developer to invest in improved concrete with less climate impact.