In November 2011, the Nordic Prime Ministers issued the “The Nordic Region – Leading in Green Growth” report with eight initiatives to strengthen Nordic strongholds within green solutions. One of these initiatives was to cooperate within green technical norms and standards in the building sector.

Nordic Innovation under the auspices of Nordic Council of Ministers was given the task of further developing this initiative. A mapping process of green regulation and standards in the building sector and the current development of the European regulation was followed up at a workshop in June 2012 with Nordic participants from industry, standardization bodies, research and the public authorities and as result, the following areas were selected:

1. Sustainable refurbishment of existing buildings.
2. Indoor Climate and voluntary classification standards.
3. Future EU regulation on product and building declarations.

This document is the result of work area 1) Sustainable refurbishment of existing buildings. The main objective of this document is to deliver specific Nordic results for sustainable refurbishment of existing buildings to a European level.