Peab’s sustainability work

For Peab sustainability entails running a business that takes responsibility for both its own impact and the impact of the entire value chain upstream and downstream, as well as working for the good community. Working sustainably is a strategic matter for us, completely integrated into our business model and operations. We make it clear that every employee should promote sustainable development in their role based on Peab’s core values, business concept, mission, strategic targets and Code of Conduct.

Our material sustainability aspects are summarized in two of our four strategic targets: Best workplace and Leader in social responsibility. Our four busi­ness areas col­lab­o­rating lo­cal­ly give us bet­ter con­trol over the sup­ply chain. Our em­ploy­ees en­sure that we as far as pos­si­ble use local re­sources in the form of our own em­ploy­ees, our own input goods and sub­con­trac­tors. Together with our en­gage­ment in the com­mu­ni­ty and in­te­grat­ed cli­mate and en­vi­ron­men­tal work this is the basis of our sustainability work and what we call lo­cal­ly pro­duced com­mu­ni­ty build­ing.

Regarding Peab’s cli­mate im­pact our ma­te­r­i­al use is a par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant area where our op­er­a­tions gen­er­ate car­bon emis­sions. This is why we try to hus­band re­sources and to greater extent use our own and local ma­te­r­i­al as well as de­vel­op more climate-​improved ma­te­r­i­al. Our in­vest­ments in ECO-​Betong (ECO-​Concrete) and ECO-​Asfalt are two prac­ti­cal ex­am­ples where we both reuse ma­te­r­i­al and mix in al­ter­na­tive binder to re­duce our car­bon footprint. Peab is also a dri­ving force in sev­er­al de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives to op­ti­mize ma­te­r­i­al and ver­i­fy­ qual­i­ty. In 2021 we be­came the first Swedish construction and civil engineering com­pa­ny to partner with SSAB in fos­sil free steel, which means that as of 2026 we will begin to use steel that has been produced fos­sil free in our construction and civil engineering projects. But already last year Peab and SSAB took an important first step in this collaboration when together with Ruuki Construction and real estate company Wihlborgs we presented the world’s first building containing steel produced fossil free. The building is a 6,000 m2 industrial plant in Lund and the steel was used to produce part of the facade panels. The project shows how we together with customers and material suppliers can transition to sustainable construction.

Research and development

The pur­pose of Peab’s R&D is to pro­vide so­ci­ety, our cus­tomers and other stake­hold­ers with added value. We do this by col­lab­o­rating with uni­ver­si­ties, col­leges and trade or­ga­ni­za­tions and ac­tively par­tic­i­pating in many industry projects. We take part in strate­gic, innovative and tac­ti­cal op­er­a­tive pro­grams to be able to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in both the short and long term. Through new dis­cov­er­ies we can im­prove or de­vel­op new prod­ucts, ser­vices and pro­duc­tion process­es. The function Research and In­no­va­tion is aimed at supporting our business in its transition to climate-adapted pro­duc­ts and with investments in new technology.

During the year we started up new collaborations and iden­ti­fi­e­d new partnerships that include new circular pro­ces­ses where we also use more residual products from other industries as raw materials. For example, we have participated in several research projects, with fi­nan­cing from SBUF, where we study binding and storing carbon dioxide in old, crushed cement that is recycled into new cement. Some research projects also ended in 2023 such as safe formation of heavy machinery, biodiversity, recycled mineral aggregates, energy use and green facade material. We have also developed collaboration with the Swedish start-up CemVision that has begun to produce climate neutral cement. Last year we also launched an industry-wide program for a climate neutral concrete and cement industry through VINNOVA.

During the year Peab and Luleå Uni­ver­si­ty of Technology continued their long-term strategic partnership in sustainable construction, di­gi­ta­li­zation and re­sour­ce ef­ficiency which lets Peab take advantage of the latest research in our operations. At Chal­mers in Gothenburg we participate in the research program “Future Trans­por­tation In­fra­struc­ture” and at The Faculty of Engineering, LTH, we are active in the “Cen­ter for construction ­ro­bo­tics”. Together with The KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stock­holm we collaborate on a project in road technology and geotechnical engineering. We also participate in other forms of collaboration such as LFM30 (Local roadmap for a cli­mate ­ne­u­tral con­struc­tion and civil en­gi­neer­ing sec­tor in Malmö 2030), In­fraswe­den 2030 (pro­motes a com­pet­i­tive and cli­mate neu­tral trans­port in­fra­struc­ture sec­tor by 2030), Smart Built En­vi­ron­ment (in­no­va­tion for the com­mu­ni­ty build­ing sec­tor) and Mist­ra Car­bon Exit (re­search for cli­mate neu­tral­i­ty 2045).

Peab’s in­vest­ment in our ECO-​products is im­por­tant where, for in­stance, ECO-​Betong (ECO-Concrete) has been de­vel­oped to fur­ther re­duce cli­mate im­pact and de­pen­dence on ce­ment.

In ac­cor­dance with the An­nu­al Re­ports Act chap­ter 6 para­graph 11 Peab has cho­sen to present the statu­to­ry Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Re­port out­side of the Board of Di­rec­tors’ Re­port. The parts re­quired in a sus­tain­abil­i­ty re­port can be found under sec­tions Tar­gets and strate­gies (pages 14–15), Best workplace (pages 22–29), Leader in so­cial responsibility (pages 34–47),  Our perspective on sus­tain­able busi­ness (page 48–53), Reporting according to the EU Taxonomy (page 54–59), Summary sustainability data (page 60), Risks and risk man­age­ment (page 82–85) and Cor­po­rate gov­er­nance re­port (page 157–167).