Partners: Multiconsult (engineering consultant, tool developer), Norwegian Property/NPRO (property owner), Trondheim Municipality
Country: Norway
What was piloted?
Multiconsult developed and validated a reuse tool for electrical equipment, a structured methodology to systematically assess and visualise the reuse potential of electrical components in a building. The tool supports early-phase decisions, detailed reuse inventories during design, and final reuse documentation. It helps designers, property owners and decision makers identify components with high reuse value, for example lighting fixtures, distribution boards and cable management. It was tested in two real cases, one private and one public: NPRO's commercial building at Snarøyveien 30 and Trondheim Municipality's Tonstad School. The work was carried out with Multiconsult's electrical engineers and the property owners' teams.
Challenges and how they were tackled
Data quality and consistency. Two lighting fixtures with the same description could have very different embodied emissions. The team anchored the tool in reliable public data for cost and emissions, and defined clear input fields and assessment criteria.
Data availability about the existing building. The tool was designed to work with partial data in the early phase, and to be enriched progressively as the project moves forward.
Avoiding misuse. The tool is designed for use by experienced electrical engineers with project-specific judgement, supporting decisions rather than replacing them.
Key learnings
Electrical equipment is a serious circular opportunity: reuse of selected components can deliver embodied-carbon savings, material reuse and cost savings, particularly when reuse is decided early enough to influence design. In one of the pilot sites, the reuse tool identified potential savings of 123 tonnes of CO₂ and approximately 23 million NOK from reusing electrical components, with the highest potential in low-voltage equipment such as cable trays, distribution boards and lighting fixtures.
Early-phase use is where the tool supports the most.
Standardised assessment is what makes scaling possible.
Cross-sector validation matters: testing with a private property owner and a public client confirmed applicability across building types.
Reuse needs a structural pull: clearer regulatory drivers, financial incentives and standardised documentation.
Solution scaling probability: 4.5 / 5
Over the next 12 to 24 months, Multiconsult will refine and broaden the reuse tool, expand it to additional component categories (including HVAC), and integrate it into the firm's design processes.
From the reuse tool you can get concrete numbers from a simple site visit and see where the potential lies. Used in early design, reuse becomes much easier and lowers the installation cost. The tool addresses a real need in the industry.
— Håvard Meinseth, Sustainable Electrical Advisor and Tool Developer, Multiconsult