„There are no new stu­dies on this, but there are however old stu­dies from the Uni­versity of Iceland that show that the use of mater­i­als in Icelandic structures is far above European avera­ges,“ said Magnús Rannver Rafnsson, engineer, in the radio show Sprengi­sandur yester­day. He states that Icelanders are world champions when it comes to the use of concrete.

In his opinion the nation is one of the worst when it comes to environ­mental waste.

„It was not long ago that German scientists pointed out that if we continue like this in construction, we will not be looking at a 1.5 degree warming – but more like 7 to 8 degrees warming,“ said Rafnsson. App­rox­ima­tely 40% of greenhouse gases, which create global warming, are due to construction. Ther­efore, he states that emissions from construction are much big­ger and more of a problem than emissions from traffic.

When it comes to build­ing houses, Icelanders use much more concrete than most other European nations. In addition, the way they use concrete is differ­ent. „Nations mostly precast their structures in practical factories where efficiency, quality and speed can be achieved, but we on the other hand do not use a lot of build­ing units, and we use site-cast concrete a lot,“ Rafnsson says, add­ing that we, Icelanders, „are completely stuck in site-casting everyt­hing. “ He says that very little time is spent on innovation and design, and thus Icelanders tend to be stuck in old met­hods. Rafnsson says that the Nordic countries are far ahead of us when it comes to these things.

Finally, he deems it necessary for us to try to change both met­hods and mater­i­als, to be better able to combat global warming.

This article was orig­inally publ­is­hed in Icelandic by Katrín Heiða Guð­jóns­dóttir.