By Cristina Gamboa, CEO, World Green Building Council
5 November 2026
We know how to create more sustainable, resilient and energy-efficient buildings. Across the world, technologies, policies and market practices are already demonstrating that lower emissions, better performance and economic value can go hand in hand.
This progress gives us reason for optimism. But it also raises a pressing question: how do we accelerate the adoption of proven solutions with the urgency and at the scale necessary?
As I join climate leaders in Antalya, Türkiye, for COP31, which the Presidency has framed as an ‘Implementation COP’, that question must be central to our discussions.
We have solutions that work and extensive proof of their impact. COP31 must create the conditions for their adoption across countries and markets, making sustainable built environments the norm rather than isolated showpieces.
Over the past decade, global building energy intensity has fallen by 8.5%, according to the latest UN Environment Programme Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction, reflecting improvements in building codes, appliance standards and performance measures.
Policy is advancing too. Around 80 countries now have mandatory or voluntary building energy performance codes, 30% more than in 2015. Stronger standards and regulations are turning better building performance from an aspiration into a requirement, changing how entire markets operate.
Technology and energy systems are evolving in parallel. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that heat pumps avoided 53 billion cubic metres of natural gas consumption for heating across Europe, Japan and China in 2025.
Buildings are also taking on a new role in the energy system. With renewable generation, storage and smart energy technologies, they can manage demand more flexibly, ease pressure on grids and make better use of clean power. Wider adoption will depend on the necessary infrastructure, skills and investment.
Markets are also responding. Energy performance, operating costs and transition risks are increasingly shaping how owners and investors assess the long-term value of property. The economic case for sustainable buildings is strengthening alongside the environmental imperative.
Across World Green Building Council’s global network of more than 80 Green Building Councils (GBCs) and 50,000 partners, we see how these shifts translate into practical change. National GBCs are convening the coalitions, shaping the policy and finance conditions, and building the market capacity needed to move solutions towards scale.
What connects these initiatives is their influence on the decisions that define the built environment. A planning requirement can change how future buildings are designed. A financing mechanism can make renovation viable for more owners. A national roadmap can establish a shared direction for investment and delivery.
Different countries are taking different approaches, but the underlying lesson is consistent: meaningful progress requires changing the conditions that determine what is built, renovated and financed. This depends on collaboration between governments, financial institutions, businesses and practitioners.
Despite these advances, the pace remains insufficient and delivery uneven. We need to move beyond individual successes towards broader, sustained change across the built environment.
WorldGBC is proud to have supported the COP Presidency in developing the Antalya Compact for Energy Efficient Buildings and the 35-by-35 Global Electrification Pledge.
Together, they set a shared direction for two complementary priorities: reducing the operational energy intensity of the global building stock by at least 25% by 2035 and increasing electricity’s share of global final energy consumption to 35% by 2035.
Crucially, the Antalya Compact goes beyond international targets to identify what national implementation requires: stronger building codes, renovation strategies, access to finance, implementation capacity and national roadmaps that bring these elements together.
The priority now is to connect that global ambition with the delivery infrastructure capable of implementing it.
We do not need to create parallel structures. The Buildings Breakthrough provides shared global direction and policy recommendations; national and subnational roadmaps translate those recommendations into locally relevant pathways; and GBC-led national coalitions can help turn those pathways into policy, investment and market action.
Importantly, this work sits within the recognised delivery architecture of the Global Climate Action Agenda. WorldGBC leads with partners on two Plans to Accelerate Solutions (PAS): Building Efficiency, Electrification and Renewable Integration (BEERI) and Decarbonisation and Resilience Roadmaps for Buildings and Construction. Delivering on these is the focus of WorldGBC’s Building the Transition programme, working with GBCs to develop national and regional decarbonisation roadmaps.
Rather than adding another layer of commitments, COP31 must strengthen what is already in place: connect and resource these initiatives, use roadmaps to guide national implementation and empower national GBC-led coalitions to deliver and adopt these pathways across entire markets.
For WorldGBC, success at COP31 means ensuring that the evidence and experience already available shape what governments and industry do next.
That means stronger national policies that give markets certainty, finance and technical capacity that enable widespread implementation, and coordinated action that makes better-performing buildings accessible to more people and communities.
We have the technologies, a growing body of evidence and practical experience of what enables change.
Ultimately, implementation will not happen in negotiating rooms. It will happen in countries, cities and markets, through the decisions about what gets built, renovated, financed and powered.
Our network is already working in those places — COP31 gives us the opportunity to drive delivery at scale.