WBCSD’s Roadmap to Nature Positive: Foundations for the built environment system is a step-by-step guidance with supporting material developed through extensive engagement with 8 companies, and Arcadis as lead consultant. 

This guidance identifies five subsystems to describe the different characteristics of the built environment system: buildings, urban infrastructure, transport infrastructure, marine and coastal infrastructure, and a crosscutting subsystem covering upstream mining and extraction activities. 

Download the roadmap

Concrete New Zealand (ConcreteNZ) published A Net-Zero Carbon Concrete Industry for Aotearoa New Zealand: Roadmap to 2050 .

The roadmap outlines the New Zealand cement and concrete industry’s commitment to achieve net-zero concrete production by 2050. The roadmap sets targets for a 44% reduction in direct and electricity-related greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, aligning with global standards.

The roadmap also showcases the industry’s efforts and innovations to reduce emissions and enhance the sustainability of concrete, and it aims to support the New Zealand government’s climate change goals and contribute to the global net zero movement.

Read the full roadmap here.

The World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) published the fifth edition of its annual Advancing Net Zero (ANZ) Status Report.

The report showcases breakthrough action from across the GBC network, including the 35 GBCs participating in WorldGBC’s global Advancing Net Zero programme, 175 signatories to the Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment (the Commitment), the wider GBCs network, partners and more. In addition, the report also highlights collaborative efforts from the market that support WorldGBC’s mission to achieve 100% net zero carbon buildings by 2050.

Read the full report here

The focus of this report is to evaluate the strategic use of renewables, energy storage, building load flexibility, and grid coordination. These focus areas are foundational to achieving smart, connected, and high-performing buildings, and in supporting advances in grid-interactive efficient building (GEB) technologies and their adoption in the US residential building stock. This research analyzes the potential value of GEB strategies on a subset of WinnCompanies’ multifamily housing portfolio and develops an investment plan of energy projects. Through an extensive assessment of the portfolio, the study recommends packages of measures for optimized portfolio-wide investments and provides investment pathways to support decarbonization. 

Read on here

Each year, FIEC publishes its Statistical Report, which gives an insight into construction activity and demonstrates its significance for the economy as a whole.

The report analyses 22 countries individually, as well as the European Union as a whole on the basis of the following elements:

• General overview (general economic situation, general economic policy, public policies in relation to the construction industry);
• Investment in total construction, new housebuilding, renovation and maintenance of residential buildings, non-residential building and civil-engineering;
• Employment in construction and its share in overall EU employment;
• Building permits.

For the first time, the report also provides an overview of the evolution of prices for certain construction products. The texts and data contained within the report are drawn up on the basis of the national reports provided by the FIEC Member Federations.

Find the report here

CAPSA is a digital building passport data platform, developed by CUES Foundation (one of the co-chairs of the GlobalABC Work Area 5: Building measurement, data and information) and in partnership including with the Horizon Europe framework as well as with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC). 

A Building Passport (sometimes referred to as a Digital Building Logbook or (Electronic) Building File) is a whole life cycle repository of building information. It covers a building’s administrative documentation as well as data regarding its plot and location, its technical and functional characteristics, and its environmental, social and financial performance. In its fully digital realization, the Building Passport acts as a single point of input, access and visualization of all the information associated with a building. It is a living document, containing a mix of traceable static “as built” and continuous dynamic record‑keeping of performance data and information. Learn more from our report The Building Passport: A Tool for Capturing and Managing Whole Life Data and Information in Construction and Real Estate.

The CAPSA Digital Building Passport prototyping platform was developed to flank the strategic activities of the GlobalABC around the topic with a way to feasibility test ideas and methodologies. CAPSA consists of a smartphone app for data collection as well as a corresponding cloud-based data base. The smartphone app aims to enable non-expert users to generate robust and comparable data. Data collection focussed on hard and visible information, entered one info at a time. Besides direct data entry, photos are taken for context and image recognition purposes.

Download the CAPSA pamphlet to learn more. 

 “Constructing a Sustainable Future” is the new Saint-Gobain magazine dedicated to sustainable construction.

The construction sector is indeed at the crossroads of the major contemporary issues that humanity and the planet are facing: the climate crisis, energy emergency, rapid urbanization and the social challenge of decent housing, as well as the necessary protection of natural resources. In this context, we have both solutions and a capacity for action that can turn the tide, at a time when decision-makers around the world are making a commitment to build a more sustainable world.

The purpose of this publication is to share and illustrate our mobilization to meet this ambition. An expanded digital version will be available on constructing-sustainable-future.com at the beginning of June. The digital magazine is designed to be a link between the various representatives of the building and construction industry, as well as a platform for exchange and dialogue to share the greatest achievements, best practices and innovations that will help to accelerate our sector's transition. Like this first edition, the digital magazine will address and give a voice to all who wish to engage in this end: architects, urban planners, promoters, builders, craftsmen, manufacturers, distributors, political leaders, and students.
 

The 2023 edition of Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report provides the most comprehensive look available at the world’s progress towards global energy targets on access to electricity, clean cooking, renewable energy and energy efficiency, giving the international community the latest global dashboard to register progress on the SDG7 targets at the halfway mark towards the 2030 deadline. It is prepared by the SDG7 Indicator Custodian Agencies: the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the UN Statistics Division (UNSD) at UN DESA, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO). The report will be presented to high-level decision makers together with the SDG7 Policy Briefs at a special launch event on 11 July at the UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development in New York, which will include a global review of SDG7.

Commissioned by Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe, the study demonstrates how the budgets devoted to fossil fuel-related infrastructures and supply in different countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) could be utilised to achieve energy efficiency improvements through the implementation of different policy measures, including ones suggesting the utilisation of renewable energy sources, specifically focused on space heating. Therefore, four scenarios on demand side investments were delineated, in addition to the baseline scenario where an improvement of existing fossil fuel boilers was considered.

The purpose of this study is to examine, through simulating different policy measures, the implementation of the Energy Efficiency First principle in practice when comparing supply side to demand side energy investments in fossil fuels, with a particular focus on fossil gas investments.

Download the study here

Minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) can effectively accelerate deep energy renovation, spur innovation and construction, create demand for renovation services, and provide certainty to market players across the value chain.

This paper by BPIE explains how MEPS can be implemented effectively while remaining socially just, using a differentiated approach that carefully follows a series of design principles.

Download the paper here.