As California pushes toward a clean energy future, the city of San José has emerged as a leader in building electrification, offering valuable lessons for other cities nationwide. With residential buildings representing the largest source of natural gas use in the city, San José’s initiatives aim to reshape how these buildings are powered while prioritizing community needs, equity, and affordable housing. In 2022, ULI partnered with San Jose on an Advisory Services Panel (ASP) to inform this policy direction for multifamily buildings of all types. The aim of the ASP was to support the city in enabling property owners to step up their electrification retrofit efforts, encourage the adoption of on-site solar and batteries, and move the market forward.
The global shift toward sustainable construction is accelerating as the industry moves from aspiration to verified performance. Concrete, long criticised for its high carbon footprint, is being redefined through circular economy strategies that support end-of-life reuse in construction and promote low embodied carbon materials. Architects and engineers are embedding circular construction strategies into sustainable building practices, applying life cycle thinking in construction to optimise resource efficiency and reduce embodied carbon in materials. Such approaches are transforming the carbon footprint of construction and reinforcing environmental sustainability in construction as a measurable obligation rather than a marketing claim.
The completion of Fife’s £88 million Passivhaus school demonstrates that large-scale, energy-efficient buildings can achieve net zero whole life carbon through sustainable building design and low carbon construction materials. These exemplify net zero carbon buildings shaped by rigorous whole life carbon assessment and lifecycle assessment methodologies. As life cycle cost data becomes integral to design decisions, investors and public bodies are identifying that sustainable design aligned with BREEAM v7 and other industry frameworks offers operational resilience and reduced environmental impact of construction.
Government enforcement is tightening, signalling a systemic move toward decarbonising the built environment. New compliance measures for environmental breaches underline that the pollution tolerance threshold is closing for all sectors, including construction. Public funds promoting nature recovery are driving integration between green infrastructure, sustainable material specification, and eco-design for buildings. The resulting shift positions environmental product declarations (EPDs) and whole life carbon metrics as key benchmarks of sustainable architecture and green construction performance.
Across major projects such as Sizewell C, ambitions for biodiversity net gain and carbon neutral construction reflect the growing maturity of a market that values whole life carbon as highly as upfront capital efficiency. Low carbon building approaches using renewable building materials and sustainable building design principles are reinforcing the industry’s commitment to genuine sustainability. The rise of green building materials and eco-friendly construction signals that the transition to a carbon-responsible built environment is no longer hypothetical—it is a defining characteristic of 21st-century sustainable urban development.
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