Adapteo participated in the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30), the “flagship” annual climate summit organized under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This year COP30 was hosted in Belém, Brazil (November 10–21), and it aimed to bring together world governments, civil-society groups, scientists, and businesses like ours in order to discuss and advance global climate action.
The host emphasized implementation as in “how will we execute what we already committed to”, and this year's conference had a strong focus on infrastructure, cities, resilience, and climate-adaptation.
Three-tiered participation
We participated in many ways: via Business Sweden in their pavilion; with our Chief Sustainability Officer, Lina Wiles, PhD joining a panel remotely; and with our Head of External Relations, Zoey Tsopela in person joining the conversations and pushing Adapteo's message.
We voiced our position—that circular construction is a viable, scalable solution to positively impact negative effects of climate change— and can take a step back to reflect.
Our position resonated...
First, it was encouraging to see that our position was indeed echoed by other companies and even policymakers and speakers in attendance. Over the course of the conference, it become painfully clear that the world is missing the market conditions that make circular, low-carbon choices the obvious ones. And that getting to practical adoption, meaning, how quickly we can align incentives to reward what works— which was this year’s theme and angle at COP30— is truly the way forward if we are to see any positive change.
Innovative thinking from Sweden
Second, it was encouraging to learn that Lina Wiles’ talk– which was part of a panel highlighting Circular and Sustainable Public Procurement— was well received by those at the conference. It presented innovative thinking from Sweden and tangible, proven solutions, including a break-through diagnostic tool.
Lina shared how Space as a Service and large-scale reuse of modular buildings can speed up decarbonisation, resilience, and circularity in the built environment. She discussed how a circular business model, built around movable, reusable buildings, solves urgent space needs while cutting emissions and resource use. She also shared a way to measure circularity performance across products and business operations in a first-of-its-kind way: The Adapteo Circularity Index, which aims to answer the question, “How circular are we?”
Key takeaways
Here are some key takeaways from Lina's presentation:
- Space-as-a-Service and modular reuse can rapidly cut emissions by avoiding unnecessary construction, lowering embodied carbon, and reducing material extraction and waste.
- Adapteo’s modular buildings are movable, reusable, and high-quality, enabling speedy deployment for schools, healthcare, worker housing, offices, and more while maintaining flexibility as needs change.
- Modularity is a resilience asset—spaces can be reconfigured, expanded, relocated, or reused to help cities and industries respond to demographic shifts, climate impacts, and budget constraints.
- Adapteo’s Circularity Index (co-developed with Arup) is a first-of-its-kind method to measure circular performance across design, materials, business operations, fleet utilization, and lifespan.
- Low waste, high reuse: Adapteo’s business model keeps most materials circulating within the fleet, with very minimal outflow—demonstrating true circularity in practice.
- Massive carbon savings: Reusing and refurbishing modules delivers up to 96% lower embodied carbon, while even new Adapteo modules start with up to 60% lower embodied carbon than traditional construction.
- Scaling modular circular solutions buys time for cities and industries to retrofit permanent buildings, meet climate goals, increase resilience, and make cost-effective transitions.
Lina explained the versitality and scale of Adapteo's solutions:
“Here are some examples of what it (built in adaptability) can look like. A fully equipped accommodation village for 1500 tunnel workers on the border between Denmark and Germany, an extra floor of offices on the roof of Oslo's biggest hospital. A worker village in northern Sweden, housing workers as they build a factory for the future. A school in Germany housing pupils in their home area while the local schools are renovated or rebuilt.
Although we only need a flat surface to place our buildings on, sometimes even that is a challenge, like here deep in the fjordlands of Norway, then we can house your employees in a floating village instead. And ultimately, when we can no longer rent out our modules, we try to find them a second home. As an example, we have recently donated modules for the rebuilding of Ukraine as temporary housing and to serve as fire stations.”
Impatience and a call-to-action
And lastly, there was a sense of impatience throughout the conference: that attendees accepted that something must be done and done fast and that the way forward must remove blockages and set up incentives to actually allow change to happen. More satisfying was to witness just how relevant Adapteo’s modular, circular solution is.
Our boots on the ground, Zoey Tsopela, summarized the mood at COP30 best:
“Conversations kept circling back to the built environment’s global footprint, about one-third of the world’s CO₂ emissions. The statistics are familiar, but by my last day here, they felt less abstract. When we spoke about an independent and resilient Europe, material scarcity, or the strain on public infrastructure, they were describing the very spaces where Adapteo’s solutions already operate: schools, care homes, workplaces, and community facilities that can be built quickly, adapted often, and reused again and again.”
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*30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) is the “flagship” annual climate summit organized under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This year COP30 is hosted in Belém, Brazil (November 10–21), and it aims to bring together world governments, civil-society groups, scientists, and businesses like ours in order to discuss and advance global climate action.
