Database

Climate Action Roadmaps for Buildings and Construction Bangladesh has been launched by the Ministry of Housing and Public Works, People’s Republic of Bangladesh, on 7 October.

This roadmap follows the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC) framework, developed through a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). It emphasizes reducing emissions and improving resilience across the entire life cycle of buildings, and sets ambitious short-, medium-, and long-term targets for decarbonizing the built environment, aligned with the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action. The roadmap is centred around four main cross-cutting objectives: (1) zero embodied carbon; (2) zero operational carbon; (3) adaptation; and (4) well-being and inclusion.

Download the roadmap below

Since its launch at COP 26, the Breakthrough Agenda has become established as an annual collaborative process centred around the Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is currently supported by 59 countries representing over 80% of global GDP, and by over 100 initiatives working to enhance collaboration within major emitting sectors. Countries can endorse Breakthrough goals to make clean technologies and sustainable practices more affordable, accessible and attractive than their alternatives by 2030 in the power, road transport, hydrogen, steel, cement, buildings and agriculture sectors. This report covers six of the seven sectors, with agricultural covered in a separate report.

The Breakthrough Agenda establishes an annual cycle to track developments towards these goals, identify where further coordinated international action is urgently needed to accelerate progress and then galvanise public and private international action behind these specific priorities in order to make these transitions quicker, cheaper, and easier for all.

To initiate this cycle, world leaders tasked the IEA and the UN Climate Change High Level Champions to develop an annual Breakthrough Agenda report to provide an independent evidence base and expert recommendations for where stronger international collaboration is needed.

This document, the 2024 Breakthrough Agenda Report, is the third of these annual reports. It provides an assessment of progress against the recommendations made last year, updating recommendations for what more needs to be done.

This year's report includes the second edition of the Buildings Chapter, developed in collaboration with the GlobalABC. The chapter highlights progress in the built environment and calls on governments to strengthen collaboration, in five priority areas: standards & certification, demand creation,  finance & investment, research & deployment, capacity & skills– to accelerate decarbonisation and enhance resilience in buildings. 

Download the report here

The 2024 Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) recast introduces more stringent provisions for EPCs and establishes a framework for renovation passports as an additional voluntary tool to provide a clear roadmap for staged deep renovations. In accordance with Article 12 of the EPBD, Member States are required to put in place a renovation passport scheme by 29 May 2026 based on the common framework set out in Annex VIII of the EPBD.

The iBRoad2EPC project has developed a flexible, adaptable and modular model renovation passport that provides a set of solutions that can be immediately applied to the transposition and/or implementation of a number of EU policy instruments.

The present report includes a detailed analysis of how iBRoad2EPC can support and facilitate the implementation of each article of the EPBD and its requirements for the renovation passports as set in Annex VIII, as well as the Renovation Wave strategy, the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). The analysis then informs concrete actions to maximise the uptake of iBRoad2EPC to achieve the EU’s decarbonisation goals.

The iBRoad2EPC EU roadmap thus provides guidance to policymakers on how to optimally prepare the ground for national roll out and maximise the use of iBRoad2EPC to accelerate deep renovation in the EU. It thereby provides recommendations for improving the implementation of related Directives or amending the regulatory framework to promote deep renovation, and how to best use iBRoad2EPC for this purpose.

Download the report 

The 2024 State of Cities Climate Finance report (SCCFR) provides the most comprehensive assessment of urban climate flows and needs globally. It aims to inform action on mobilizing finance for city-level climate action at scale by 2030.

Cities are indispensable actors in the climate transition. Currently, 56% of the world’s population live in cities and 70% of people are expected to live in urban areas by 2050 (World Bank 2023a). Many urban areas, particularly in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), are already facing frequent and intense extreme weather events such as floods, drought, and heat.

This report was prepared by the Energy Efficiency Hub’s Energy Efficiency in Buildings (EEB) Task Group, and focuses on the experience of Argentina, Brazil, People’s Republic of China, the European Commission, Germany, Korea and Saudi Arabia. Insights from Belgium, Canada, France, Ireland and the United States are also included. Deep retrofit is an essential tool to reaching building decarbonisation by 2050, and the recommendations in this report focus on enabling widespread deployment of deep retrofits.

The Pilot Version of the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard (The Standard) was launched in September 2024.  The Standard and associated documents can be downloaded here.

The Standard Pilot Version contains the technical details on how a building should meet the Standard, including what limits and targets it needs to meet, the technical evidence needed to demonstrate this and how it should be reported. In the future, projects will be able to verify that a project conforms to the Standard.
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We encourage organisations to target and adopt the Pilot version of the Standard on your buildings and assets.  
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In due course we will be seeking buildings that can be used to pilot test the Standard, to better understand its implementation. Find out more and register your interest via this link.