The energy use of buildings affects the entire energy system. Choosing climate-friendly energy solutions and renovation strategies in the building stock is thus an important part of the transition to a more sustainable energy system. The construction industry and the real-estate sector have been lacking practical tools to assess the climate implications of different energy solutions in buildings, accounting for the interaction with the energy system. We developed a tool for calculating the climate impact of a change in a new or rebuilt building, taking into account the interaction between the building and the overall energy system, regarding greenhouse gas emissions. The tool is called Tidstegen and is based on a methodology that has been developed in several research projects. The methodology takes into account the point in time when the building uses and/or produces electricity, heat and cooling, and also the development of the energy systems over time. It analyzes the consequences of changes. This is usually referred to as an environmental assessment from the decision perspective or consequential assessment. It is an established approach in life cycle assessment. The calculations include consequences that occur in the local district heating system and also in the North European electricity system. The Tidstegen tool allows for making more informed decisions when renovating and building new properties. It can be used by, e.g., property owners, consultants, municipalities or builders as one of several decision-support tools when making decisions on energy efficiency measures or investments to produce renewable electricity, heating or cooling at, on, or in the building. In the tool Tidstegen you compare a building with energy measures to a reference building, which is similar but without the measures being installed. The Tidstegen tool can also be used by energy companies for the climate assessment of, for example, different investments in their district-heating networks. The user of the tool feeds it with energy data (on produced and used electricity, heating and cooling) for the reference building and for each of the case studies to be analyzed. The reference building, which could be a current building in the case of retrofitting or a base alternative in the case of new construction, is entered by the user. Energy data should have a high time resolution, where hourly data is preferred. If the building is connected to a district-heating network, the user selects this district-heating system if it is available in the tool. Otherwise, the idea is that the local energy company adds new district-heating data in the tool according to a specified method. Initially there will be three modelled district-heating grids available in the tool, a small, a middle-sized and a large, if local data is not available. Data on the electricity system (North European) is already in the tool with three future scenarios that are updated by the coordinators of the tool. The tool then calculates the difference in climate impact between each case study and the reference building and presents the results in numbers, diagrams and bars. The calculations currently only consider energy use and energy conversion during the operational phase. Energy used to produce building materials has not been included in the project. For this there are other tools available. There are currently several activities where a tool like Tidstegen would be very useful. The benefits for the construction and real estate industry are, among other things, that they are able to plan energy solutions from a climate perspective at an early stage and that they can better see the consequences of different choices, even if the consequences of energy conversion occur beyond the borders of Sweden. Energy companies see the benefit in that climate-smart decisions in buildings will help the energy system to develop in a sustainable direction. To accomplish that, tools and environmental assessment methods like the Tidstegen are needed. The actual consequences of a measure are always uncertain. Tidstegen estimates the consequences with models, which are always simplifications of the complex reality. Results from the tool Tidstegen will also probably be considered controversial for some, and the results are not always intuitive. This type of system effects should rather be seen as indicative and used for increased understanding of the systems to which the building is connected, rather than counting the exact climate impact for different energy solutions. A widespread use of the tool, however, requires that it is user-friendly and free of bugs. Our next step is therefore to test the tool in several pilot projects. As new knowledge and new data are generated, the tool will also need to be updated to avoid becoming outdated. After the pilot projects have been carried out the tool will be available on IVL:s webpage.