Climbing the CO2 Performance Ladder: What it takes to decarbonize as a construction company

Construction is one of Europe's largest emitters, and one of its hardest sectors to decarbonise. Heavy-emitting raw materials, hundreds of subcontractors, and market demand still ruled by lowest-price logic make progress genuinely difficult. Nonetheless, the pressure is mounting fast. EU ETS and CBAM are driving up the cost of cement, steel and transportation. Embodied carbon mandates are spreading across Europe. And Belgium's full rollout of the CO₂ Performance Ladder in 2025 has made carbon reporting a baseline requirement for construction companies. So what does it actually take to climb the CO₂ Performance Ladder and effectively decarbomize as a construction company? In this video we speak with Simon Maillet, Sustainability Manager at Cordeel, and Jerome Cloetens, CEO of Palau, as we get into what real decarbonisation progress looks like in construction. We'll cover: The biggest challenges in climbing the CO₂ Performance Ladder as a construction company How to monitor carbon and report on it more efficiently The pros and cons of the CO₂ Performance Ladder and how it helps comply with other frameworks How to incentivize decarbonization upstream