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| Susanne Pedersen Courtesy of GGGI |
When Susanne Pedersen joined the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) one year ago, she brought with her experience in facilitating public-private partnerships in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
As assistant direct-general at the GGGI, Pedersen is currently supervising the investment and policy solution division providing technical support in green investment, policy and technical services.
Until May 2019, she was with the Climate-Knowledge Innovation Community (Climate-KIC), Europe's largest public-private partnership on climate innovation, leading the Nordic regional office.
Of the many projects she took part in, she remembers the Zero Emission Construction Site project the most.
"In cities, it's estimated that 6-10 percent of the carbon emissions came from those construction sites. What we did was to work with Nordic capital cities on innovative procurement initiatives as well as an early engagement with the industry so that they used their purchasing power to push the private sector to comply with certain standards," Pedersen said. "As a test, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm launched a joint procurement for climate-friendly wheel loaders, a type of non-road machinery used in construction."
"We worked with the industry, like engineers and architects and construction companies, trying to find out how they could still do construction that was not a lot more costly but with machines that would produce zero emissions. Also, we worked with machinery suppliers, like Volvo and Caterpillar, and we found out that in the very short term, it would be a bit difficult to change all the construction machinery because lots of machines are diesel-powered. But suppliers and developers were willing to try things out and this started the transition."
Pedersen noted that the project had another unintended benefit. "The noise level of the construction was much lower compared with when construction was done the way it's normally done. This was good for neighbors. And the construction companies could work longer hours, in fact because usually construction above a certain noise level has tough regulations in terms of construction hours. With less noise, they could work longer hours. And possibly, they could finish their projects faster."
The project, completing its pilot phase, was implemented last year in Oslo where the first zeo-emission construction site was launched right outside the Oslo Climate Agency.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a great challenge facing the globe. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pedersen said, the climate change issue lost its prominence in many parts of the world.
"It's feared that countries will forget everything about climate and environment and pushed forward recovery packages to get the economy kick started, without thinking about the environment any longer," she said.
Yet, she congratulated Korea for vowing to integrate climate change into the recovery package.
President Moon Jae-in vowed that the government's priority in getting the economy out of its current situation will be creating jobs in the renewable energy sector and others that play a significant role in reducing CO2 emissions. More policy details are to come in June.
"If the development path is not going to be green and inclusive, it will be a disaster. That will have an impact on people in those countries and the rest of the world," she said.
Currently locked down in Denmark, she is working out of Copenhagen and trying to share her partnership experience with her GGGI colleagues by holding a Green Roundtable on June 24.
GGGI offers green growth advisory services to its clients, mostly state and local governments in developing countries, in which partnerships with the private sector is also critical.
She spent almost five years with Climate-KIC and before that she spent 17 years at Ramboll, a consulting engineering company based in Denmark, working on the development of sustainable business models for governments and companies around the world.
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