New tool for municipalities: calculate the climate impact of buildings at the planning stage

The City of Malmö is taking a new step in its efforts to reduce the climate impact of urban development. FOJAB and Plant have developed the Urban Concept calculation tool for municipal planning. With the tool, the City of Malmö's planning officers can now analyze and calculate the climate footprint of buildings already in the planning process.

- "Calculating the climate impact of buildings at the detailed planning stage increases knowledge and understanding of the factors that drive the climate footprint. The analyses will be a good basis for us in the dialogue with developers, to create consensus on what measures are needed, says Jan Rosenlöf, planning officer and project manager for the City Planning Office's climate calculation project in the City of Malmö.

In-depth calculation
The City of Malmö has set ambitious goals for calculating greenhouse gas emissions from construction projects as early as the planning stage. For example, Klimatanalys Stadsdel, a tool developed by the IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, is used to calculate the climate footprint at the neighborhood level based on factors such as land use, traffic patterns, and energy consumption.

But this calculation is not sufficient for all the issues that may arise in the planning process, says Jan Rosenlöf.

- It is based on templates for GFA, frame material and energy class. We wanted to go deeper. We need to know how the parameters the city has control over in a detailed plan actually affect the climate footprint. What happens if you change the number of storeys, the geometry of the building or the curvature of the building envelope?

Gap in the market
In recent years, various tools have been launched to calculate the climate impact of buildings at the early design stage. For example, the architectural firm FOJAB has developed Leaf Cutter Ant, a digital calculation tool that shows the relationship between form, material and carbon footprint in real time, allowing the architect to quickly and easily compare the carbon footprint of different building options. The software company Plant has in turn developed Concept, a software for climate calculations throughout the construction process, from early sketch stages to the final climate declaration.

The Malmö city planning office looked for a tool for the planning stage to meet the needs of municipalities, but found nothing on the market. There was no established method to copy and adopt.

- "We discovered a gap," says Andreas Eggertsen, climate strategist at the City of Malmö. "The knowledge is available at the design stage, but not at the planning stage, where much of the climate footprint is determined.

Tailored for municipalities
A partnership was established between the City of Malmö, FOJAB, and Plant. And now a digital tool is in place: Urban Concept. It is a further development of FOJAB’s Leaf Cutter Ant and Plant’s Concept tool, which has been specially adapted for municipal work and makes it possible to perform climate calculations for plans as part of the planning process. It is linked to the 3D modeling program SketchUp and can thus serve as a tool for all planning officers in the City of Malmö as part of their day-to-day work.

At the same time, IVL’s Climate Analysis for Neighborhoods tool has been adapted to receive data from Urban Concept in a structured manner, so that the two tools complement each other.

The method can become practice
FOJAB and Plant hope that the approach can be used by more municipalities in the future.

- "We are working to make this method a new practice. We hope that more municipalities will see the need to calculate their detailed plans and to do it in a similar way," says Petra Jenning, Development Manager at FOJAB.

- "This is not just a new tool, but a new way of working for municipal planning. We believe that climate calculation at the detailed planning stage will be an important part of future sustainable urban development," says Pelle Tunell, CEO of Plant.