Macro-level changes: Initial assessment of the impact of a voluntary sustainability programme on the Danish construction industry

The challenge of quantifying sustainability is continuously debated in the building industry. There is an increased need for quantitative solutions to be developed for measuring and comparing performance. The Danish government has proposed a voluntary sustainability program to lift the bottom of the industry with regard to sustainability performance. This study evaluates the possibilities of increasing the sustainability reference level in the building industry based on expert interviews. The study was framed upon the multi-level perspective as a theory to describe the transition to sustainability. The results indicated that existing knowledge and experience within the topics of the regulatory changes is high in the industry. Therefore, the impact of the changes would not be very effective if they are not sufficiently innovative or demanding. Regarding the effect of the voluntary sustainability program, it was found that the program is not very ambitious and likely to only have an impact on companies with a lower level of ambition in terms of sustainable initiatives. The hope however is that it will keep raising the level of sustainability.