ABSTRACT
Construction in Sweden is affected fundamentally by the dictates of a cold climate, which it shares with Canada, Finland, Norway and Russia but with hardly any other country. During recent years, however, more Government funding has been allocated to the institutes and they have been coordinated under one umbrella organisation: Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE). The former Government subsidies had been tied to specific designs, often quite detailed, and contributed to standardisation, but were also thought to raise building costs unnecessarily. The Building Research Council selected research topics and engaged Swedish and foreign experts who analysed publications and visited research groups. The Centre for energy and resource efficiency in the built environment (CERBOF) programme has also been discussed in a recent overview of all energy-related building research funded by Swedish bodies. Before 1992, there was one large Government property owner for buildings: the National Building Agency.
