Picture yourself choosing between two offices. Same size, same neighbourhood in central Oslo, roughly the same price per square metre. One has been recently refurbished, is BREEAM-certified and carries an energy label B. The other is an older building with no certification and no energy certificate to show. Most tenants we talk to look first at location and price, which is fair enough. But over the past couple of years, the green stamp has gone from a nice-to-have detail to something that genuinely affects your total cost, the quality of your working day, and how well the building holds up over the next decade.
We get more and more questions about this from tenants. What does BREEAM actually mean? Is the energy label something I need to care about if I am only leasing? And why have landlords suddenly started talking so much about green loans? Here is what you need to know, without making it more complicated than it is.
BREEAM, briefly
BREEAM is the most widely used environmental certification for buildings, and the Norwegian version is called BREEAM-NOR. It is managed by the Norwegian Green Building Council and assesses a building on everything from energy use and indoor climate to materials, transport and waste. A building earns one of five ratings: Pass, Good, Very Good, Excellent and Outstanding, with Outstanding reserved for the very best projects.
In Oslo this is no longer a niche. BREEAM-NOR holds around 70 percent of the new-build office market, and almost everything now being planned and built is certified. For existing buildings there is a separate scheme, BREEAM-NOR In-Use, which landlords use to document and improve buildings already in operation.
For you as a tenant, a BREEAM certificate means something concrete. The building has a documented healthy indoor climate, meaning daylight, ventilation and materials free of unnecessary toxins. Operating costs are often lower, which over time shows up in your service charges. And the certificate makes it easy to demonstrate a sustainability profile if your own company reports on this to clients or owners. In effect, you inherit the building's documentation.
The energy label: from formality to currency
Energy labelling has been mandatory when leasing commercial buildings for a long time, but in practice many barely noticed it. That is changing. The scale runs from A, the best, to G, and as a tenant you are entitled to ask to see the energy certificate before you sign. That is advice I give everyone: ask to see it.
From 1 January 2026, Norway introduced a new energy labelling scheme, the biggest change in over a decade. The label is simplified to a single letter grade, and the calculation is now based on weighted delivered energy. One detail matters a great deal in Oslo: buildings heated by district heating are weighted more favourably than buildings heated by electricity. In practice, some older Oslo buildings on district heating can jump several grades without any physical work being done at all. Worth keeping in mind if you are comparing certificates issued before and after the new year.
At the same time, requirements are coming from the EU. The revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive points towards the least energy-efficient commercial buildings having to be upgraded through the 2030s. Exactly how this will be implemented in Norway is not yet settled, but the direction is clear: buildings with a weak energy grade will become more expensive to own, harder to let and worth less. For you as a tenant, the consequence is simple. A building with an energy label A to C is a safer long-term deal than one far down the scale, because the landlord has less to worry about and less reason to pass upgrade costs on to tenants.
Green loans: why the landlord cares, and why it concerns you
All the major banks now offer green loans for commercial property, meaning financing on better terms for buildings that meet specific environmental criteria. The criteria are concrete. DNB, for example, requires BREEAM-NOR Excellent for a green loan on a new commercial building, plus a minimum energy class B. Since 2025 the bank has also factored the energy grade into how it values buildings, so a building with a poor grade is simply assessed as worth less.
This is the landlord's concern, not yours. But it explains a lot of what you encounter in the market. When a landlord chooses to refurbish and certify rather than let a building decline, it is often because the financing and the value depend on it. The effect for you as a tenant is positive: landlords have strong incentives to keep buildings green and energy-efficient, and that benefits you through better quality and lower service charges. The flip side is that the weakest buildings, the ones that meet neither the energy nor the certification bar, are gradually becoming less attractive. That is where you find the seemingly cheap spaces that can turn out to be expensive to sit in.
Demolish or rebuild? Why the older building is often the smarter choice
A common assumption is that new is always greener. It rarely is. A new building carries a significant carbon footprint before anyone has even moved in, from the concrete, steel and the construction process itself. A report by SINTEF for the Directorate for Cultural Heritage points out that it can take a very long time, in some cases several decades, before a new building has "earned back" the emissions from demolishing the old one and building anew. The most climate-friendly building is therefore often the one already standing.
Both regulation and the market are now pulling in the same direction. The City of Oslo requires carbon calculations for both the demolition and the reuse options in planning cases, and the Norwegian Green Building Council aims to halve the number of buildings being demolished. The result is a wave of refurbishment projects in Oslo worth knowing about when you are searching.
Stenersgata 1, right by Oslo Central Station, is a good example. Entra fully refurbished 17,000 square metres of office space, kept the load-bearing structure and cut carbon emissions by more than 40 percent compared with an equivalent new build. The result is BREEAM Excellent, energy label B and modern space inside an older shell. Grensen 9B goes even further: more than 97 percent of the existing building mass has been reused, energy consumption more than halved, and the building is fitted out as a flexible multi-tenant space.
That last point matters for you as a tenant. Many of these refurbished buildings are designed to be easy to adapt, so you avoid tearing out and rebuilding interior layouts from scratch when you move in. That saves both money and time. A well-refurbished older building therefore often gives you the best combination of low carbon footprint, modern standard and flexibility, at a price that tends to be friendlier than a brand-new landmark.
What this means when you start looking for space
You do not need to become an expert in environmental certification to make a good decision. But a few simple habits give you an edge. Always ask to see the energy certificate and ask about the building's BREEAM status before you get far into a process. Treat an energy label A to C and at least BREEAM Very Good as a quality mark that says something about both comfort and future costs. And do not write off older buildings. The best-refurbished spaces in Oslo are often the smartest deals available right now.
This is exactly the kind of assessment we help tenants with every week. We know the buildings behind the listings, we know which landlords have done the work and which have not, and we can filter out the options that actually fit your needs. If you are looking at new space in Oslo, you are welcome to get in touch, and we will go through the market together.
Sources: Norwegian Green Building Council (BREEAM-NOR, the 2025 BREEAM Award), Enova, DNB Næringsmegling, Malling & Co, SINTEF and the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, the City of Oslo, NVE, Norges Bank, Multiconsult, Entra (Stenersgata 1), Oslo Pensjonsforsikring (Grensen 9B), Nordea, SpareBank 1 and Handelsbanken, along with Spacefinder's own observations from the market.
