KVAL: Reduzer - Greenhouse Gas Reductions in Construction

Reduzer AS is developing a cloud-based web application for calculating greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, areas, and infrastructure. The software aims to commercialize publicly funded research from NTNU, which addresses shortcomings in current solutions and can be used by contractors, consultants, engineers, architects, developers, and the like. Today's solutions are time-consuming and largely manual. Today, the choice of method and background for calculations are not transparent, and there is great uncertainty associated with the results. Today's solutions are mainly adapted to the documentation of greenhouse gas emissions, and only to a small extent adapted to reduction through the planning phases and towards completion. Furthermore, current solutions are confusing and lack good functionality for adapting system boundaries, calculation methods, and target values to public and voluntary requirements. Another important shortcoming is quality assurance and quality control. The project focuses on simplifying and improving the calculation process by improving the user flow; automating tasks that will significantly save time, resources, and costs; customizing calculations that provide greater flexibility in terms of method choices and detailed analyzes; transparent reporting and automated quality control of input, method selection, and results. To achieve significant reductions in the climate impact of construction projects, it is important to be able to make good assessments from the early phase until delivery. The project will help to make greenhouse gas assessments easily accessible to all construction projects and adapted to the purpose of the calculation, will make the results reliable, and will make it possible to make informed choices about reduction strategies.

The outcomes of the project are product specifications closer to product-market fit based on many hours of structured meetings and user feedback sessions with the target group of potential customers, and a draft business plan and pricing model. The network of interested parties is drastically increased. The project is now closer to understanding what is needed for commercializing the research results and has an early functioning product that makes the research results available to early adopters. The impacts of the innovation contribute in particular to UN sustainability goals 7, 9, 11, 12, and 13. Its potentials are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from construction materials, a circular construction industry, as well as cost and time savings for the consultants and engineers. Climate accounting of construction projects is becoming required by law in more and more countries; this innovation addresses that demand and helps achieve a more sustainable construction industry.