Emissions of construction

The construction industry is a major source of emissions globally, and information on its emissions is a good and powerful way to steer the industry towards lower-emissions. The Finnish Ministry of the Environment has created a road map for low-carbon construction, which defines a long-term vision on how to reduce the carbon footprint of construction, especially that of construction materials, and promote the climate goals of the Finnish construction and real estate sector.

To support this work, SYKE published an open database of its building and infrastructure construction databases in January 2025 (https://co2data.fi/). The scientific basis, scope, and coverage of the database make it an excellent source for the automation of emission calculations. The database is provided in a machine-readable format, so its implementation through automation is straightforward.

As is almost always the case with automatic emission calculations based on financial data, the quality of the original data is paramount to the results. In order to make the calculation as activity-based as possible, reasonably accurate information on purchased construction materials and their quantities must be found in the financial data. For more information on improving the quality of financial data and suggestions for action, see our article “Improving data quality”.

Introduction of factors

We introduced new factors in February 2025 together with our customer and significantly improved the accuracy of their calculation results. With the data from the new database, the accuracy of the calculation could be extended to individual products and we increased the activity-based results of the construction calculation for them by over 60%. A total of 284 new construction factors were introduced into our system.

The new factors give our customer a significantly more accurate view of their construction emissions, combined with emissions produced by their other operations. This enables even more accurate management and reporting of emissions.

Do you want to know more about how CarbonLink can help your construction company with carbon calculations? Get in touch!