We build for a better society
Sustainability
Partnerships within sustainability
A future we all shape together
Healthier and more resilient places for all
Realizing our vision will take determination and bold thinking. Within the challenges lie great opportunities, and we will continue to work with customers and partners to capture them. Together, we can create new possibilities— designing climate-smart solutions that open fresh avenues of prosperity and drive business success.
See our work
Climate
Resilience
Responsibility
Our sustainable strategy
Understanding the needs and demands of an ever changing future
Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
Goal 8
08
Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.
Goal 9
09
Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Goal 5
05
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
We actively support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their subtargets.
We’ve identified these seven relevant SDGs:
Ranked among ENR’s Top Green Contractors from the start
248 LEED® projects completed, over 43 million-SF
Platinum member of the U.S. Green Building Council
Skanska ranked #17 on Fortune’s annual “Change the World list in 2020”
First U.S. contractor to achieve ISO 14001 certification
Keystone member of the international WELL Building Institute
Charter member of the institute for Sustainable Infrastructure
Fitwel Champion
U.S. Sustainability Statistics
To shape a future in which we and future generations will want to live, we will leverage our strengths as a business: developing people to their fullest potential, deepening our knowledge, continually improving performance.
Delivering a sustainable impact to the world
Harnessing our strategic strengths
+
Sustainable impact
Innovative solutions
Continuous improvement
Customer-first mindset
Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
Goal 12
12
Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
Goal 11
11
Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
Goal 13
13
Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
Goal 17
17
Transformative solutions for a climate-smart built environment
Creating transformative solutions drives our business forward and enables our customers to succeed in fulfilling their sustainability goals. These solutions need to be low in carbon, circular, smart and sustainable. And identifying these solutions involves education, insight and learning. We partner to share knowledge and to develop and innovate net-zero solutions for the built environment. Our goal is to transition to low-carbon construction across all our projects and ultimately achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2045.
Many of today’s buildings and spaces are not designed for the challenges faced by modern society – challenges such as extreme weather, air pollution, energy shortages and water scarcity. They also may not be designed for changes in social patterns, such as rising urban population density and changing living habits. Our vision of offering healthy, inclusive and resilient places involves forming partnerships with local communities to cultivate social value, designed to meet long-term needs. We combine social sustainability and environmental perspectives to leverage the sustainability impact we deliver through our business. We envision a world where sustainability is simply built into living–and a future filled with healthier, more sustainable, more resilient urban spaces. Places shaped together–for all.
Healthy resilient places for all
Being a responsible business, inside and out, means having a strong and committed health and safety approach that protects lives and people’ well-being. It means using our full potential by embracing diversity and creating inclusive environments. It means acting fairly and ethically, exercising integrity in all decisions, and being a trusted business partner with respect to the supply chain. It means operating with care for local environments and communities. As a responsible business, we are guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Global Compact principles. We are transparent about our sustainability direction and disclose our performance.
A responsible business for people and planet
Innovate + Collaborate + Accelerate = Together
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Sustainability Leaders
EC3 Tool
Our Sustainability Work
Sustainability Plan
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Our Projects
Building Responsibly
We seek low-carbon solutions and build for the future, today.
Our longtime leadership in sustainable construction and development provides us with the expertise to help our customers deliver on their leading edge environmental and healthy building ambitions. By leveraging our national and international experience, we can efficiently use natural resources and be a better neighbor in our communities. Green, healthy building is good business and critical to protecting our planet and the health and wellbeing of end users.
121 Seaport
Boston, MA
17-story office + retail 400,000-SF office 58,000-SF retail Certified LEED® Platinum
13-story office + retail 221,000-SF office 9,000-SF retail Certified LEED® Gold
Two Drydock
The Harlo
17-story residential + retail 212 units 7,100-SF retail Certified LEED® Gold
36,978-SF Living Building Challenge Winner Certified LEED® Platinum v4
35-story office + retail 775,000-SF office 35,000-SF retail Certified LEED® Platinum V4
28-story office + retail 375,000-SF office 7,000-SF retail Targeting LEED® Platinum Certified WiredScore Platinum Targeting WELL
Atlanta, GA
The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design
Houston, TX
Bank of America Tower
1550 on the Green
17-story residential + retail 346 units 25,000-SF retail Certified LEED® Gold
38-story office + retail 686,000-SF office 18,000-SF retail Certified LEED® Platinum
12-story residential + retail 326 units 7,500-SF retail Certified LEED® Gold
17-story office 560,000-SF office Certified LEED® Silver
4-story facility 250,000-SF 80 beds + 20 future beds Certified LEED® Silver
25-story office 372,000-SF office 454,000-SF parking Certified LEED® Silver
Watermark Seaport
Seattle, WA
2 + U
Washington, D.C.
RESA
Nashville, TN
HCA, Capitol View Office Tower
Johnson City, TN
Ballad Health, Franklin Woods Community Hospital
501 Commerce
Reducing Carbon Impact
Learn more about how EC3 can help you reduce your embodied carbon footprint.
During the preconstruction phase of our ground-up projects, we provide the range of embodied carbon footprint for the top 4 emitters of carbon–concrete, rebar, structural steel and asphalt.
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San Francisco, CA
Yotel
Los Angeles, CA
9000 Wilshire
Bellevue, WA
The Eight
Historic rehabilitation 203-room boutique hotel 60,000-SF + retail
4-story office 46,000-SF office Targeting LEED® Platinum Certified WiredScore Platinum Certified Fitwel
26-story office + retail 541,000-SF office 11,000-SF retail Targeting LEED® Platinum WiredScore Gold + Smart Score
Sustainability Work EC3 Tool Sustainability Leaders
Going beyond sustainable operations
As demand for sustainability rises, carbon-efficient building systems are becoming increasingly common.
Currently, the industry is focused on reducing carbon emissions from buildings once they are operational; however, we see an opportunity to do more. Consideration of a building’s emissions and life-cycle costs must expand beyond simple energy efficiency to include carbon produced during construction. The extraction, manufacture and transportation of building materials create varying amounts of carbon emissions, which, when combined, are classified as embodied carbon.
Skanska has been pioneering sustainable building techniques since 1995, and the EC3 tool is the next step on our journey toward a low carbon future.
The EC3 tool identifies sustainable building materials in preconstruction and helps teams reduce a building’s overall carbon footprint.
The EC3 tool allows our team to fully evaluate the material components of a project for cost and embodied carbon.
Measuring overall embodied carbon footprint
Here is an example of how the EC3 tool shows a building’s overall embodied carbon footprint and the range of improvement and reduction possible at both the building level and material category scale.
The light colored areas on each vertical bar indicate the potential emissions reductions available per each building scope and material for a project. This analysis can be completed for any project in any city, and the data becomes more detailed as the project progresses through preconstruction when material quantities and specifications become more certain.
Our actions to reduce carbon emissions
We can review the project by overall footprint or by specific components, providing a comprehensive overview of your options.
We engage with material suppliers to seek out products with lower carbon intensity, often achieving embodied carbon reductions of 10%–30%.
Innovative Design
Digitalization
Low-carbon materials
Circularity
Renewable energy
Skanska leverages technology to plan for prefabrication, industrialization and waste reduction so that constructability challenges can be understood and solutions can be developed and acted upon quickly.
Electrification
Energy efficient buildings
Skanska considers a building’s position, orientation, shape and other features that can minimize environmental impact. We work with clients and design teams to evaluate early design decisions that can reduce life-cycle carbon emissions that affect the adaptive reuse of a building, the structure/mechanical system, building envelope selection, etc. Skanska has developed a sustainability playbook to address opportunities in early design through construction.
Skanska uses tools and processes to select and procure the best versions of products with the lowest impact. We use the EC3 tool to quantify embodied carbon emissions and inform smart procurement of low carbon materials. Skanska also has an in-house methodology to quantify and reduce the emissions expended to deliver and install materials on the jobsite.
Low Carbon
Skanska offices are on the waitlist for the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning and are monitoring the market for the all-electric telehandler forklifts. Skanska will work with key trades such as earthwork, demolition, drilling and shoring to evaluate all-electric equipment options. By moving away from combustion fuels to electric power for construction equipment, heating and cooling, Skanska can reduce carbon emissions, air pollution, noise pollution, and other environmental hazards associated with petroleum spills and storage on site.
We purchase local utility renewable energy credits for temporary construction power. Construction equipment powered by renewables can be deployed, such as solar light towers and generators. By using onsite or grid generated green energy for a project’s needs during construction and operation, Skanska will reduce building life cycle carbon emissions, as well as improve the air quality on the jobsite and for surrounding communities.
Renewable Energy
Skanska performs salvage assessments before existing building demolition (if applicable) to identify salvage opportunities. We work with local waste haulers to identify community-based circular waste solutions for deconstruction, disassembly, recycling, donations and repurposing.
By balancing life-cycle costs of building improvements with acceptable first costs that reduce energy use, our clients won’t be sacrificing building performance or occupant comfort.
Energy Efficient Buildings
Testimonials about the EC3 Tool
“You’re setting targets during design, you’re using the supply chain data to understand the range of emissions that are possible per material category, and you’re specifying based on trying to get the lower carbon option that meets your specs, then you’re procuring based on that.”
Potential emission reduction
Carbon footprint for specific material
Building’s overall carbon footprint
—Stacy Smedley, Executive director of Building Transparency
"EC3 is a prime example of how we think about leveraging technology to create data-driven decisions and really support our mission to become carbon negative."
—Katie Ross, Senior Sustainability program manager for Microsoft’s real estate and facilities team
"We can really put some language into the specs before we go out to the market, and basically send a signal to that says we’re not just considering price and schedule, but we’re also putting carbon intensity alongside that in our procurement process."
—Sarah King, Sustainability Director for Skanska USA Commercial Development
Leaders
Leading the way
Skanska’s industry-leaders within sustainability.
As a company that cares for life, we recognize the current climate crisis and, more importantly, the responsibility of our industry to take action. Skanska is leading the charge and has set an ambitious target to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 in our own operations and across our entire value chain.
Steve Clem
Myrrh Caplan
Senior Vice President of Sustainability, Skanska USA Building
Learn more about sustainability
2024 Sustainability Report
Our Mass Timber Work
Director of Mass Timber and Prefabrication, Skanska USA Building
Dean Lewis, P.E., S.E.
Director of Equipment Services, Skanska USA Civil
Mason Ford
Director of Innovation, Skanska USA Commercial Development
Stewart Germain
Email Steve
Email Myrrh
Email Dean
Email Mason
Email Stewart
Latest Articles
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Skanska has been named a “Climate Leader” in Europe as the result of a joint initiative between the Financial Times...
Skanska named an international leader in sustainability
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Microsoft and Skanska are using this free tool to dramatically cut their carbon
Skanska USA Building will invest in providing initial embodied carbon assessments on every new construction project...
Skanska USA Building Expands Embodied Carbon Assessments to Projects Nationwide
Last year, Skanska Group announced a long-term target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2045. To accompany...
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Skanska begins two-year tree-planting effort to offset carbon emissions
On the campus of US university Georgia Tech, a ‘living building’ has been constructed that generates more electricity than it....
A 'living building' in the heart of Georgia Tech’s university campus
For media inquiries, please contact: Daniela Arellano, Communications Director
Daniela.Arellano@Skanska.com
The task force will produce a guidebook to help contractors understand how to calculate and report emissions.
Construction industry task force aims for standardized carbon reporting
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A new behavioral health facility in California targets net zero energy
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Skanska making green waves in the oil and gas capital
Preserving buildings saves so much more than the building.
How renovating historic buildings has so many benefits for Nashville
The oak tree will make up a planned green space for the new park.
20-year-old tree brought to Hemisfair Civic Park, 200 more planned
As industry leaders, we must do our part to develop sustainable practices, uncover communal benefits and...
Rethinking Sustainable Strategies for Construction Waste
213.317.4977
In the past decade, it’s gotten easier and less expensive to pursue green construction, according to Tolga Tutar.
‘We’ve come a long way,’ says Skanska sustainability director
