Growth in global demand for “green” office buildings has slowed after Donald Trump’s attacks on environmental protection policies caused a decline in interest in the United States, according to a survey of construction industry professionals.
Building occupiers and investors across North America and South America have expressed a marked decline in growth in demand for green commercial buildings, a shift that “appears to be in response to a shift in US policy focus,” according to a survey of members of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). Reported demand also declined in the rest of the world, although not as sharply.
Residential and commercial buildings together accounted for 34% of global carbon emissions in 2023, according to the report United Nations Environment Programme. The majority of these emissions came from heating, cooling and powering buildings, although about a fifth came from construction.
the The United Nations said there was “There is an urgent need to accelerate action in the buildings sector to achieve global climate goals.” However, the Rics survey indicated that professionals in the global construction industry are seeing slower growth in demand.
Green buildings can use a range of techniques to reduce their environmental impact, from using materials that reduce high-carbon concrete, to reducing water use, reducing heat lost through windows, and using renewable energy. Energy efficiency improvements in particular also help reduce operating costs.
Nicholas McLean, acting president of Rex, said: “It seems to me that what we are seeing at the moment may just be a bump.
“The people who are going to end up using these buildings want them to be sustainable. Everyone, frankly, knows this is the right thing to do.”
He added that green office buildings tend to have a “competitive advantage” in attracting higher rents, due to demand from large corporate tenants, in particular.
There were still more survey respondents from the United States who reported a growth in interest in sustainable commercial buildings. However, the number of construction professionals across the continent reporting high demand fell sharply, from 25% to 11%.
After promoting the newsletter
Outside North and South America, the balance indicating demand growth was 40%, which is still lower than 48% in 2021, the first year of the survey, but much higher than in the United States.
Government policies and regulations have a “huge impact on market confidence,” said Kisa Zahra, a sustainability analyst at Rics. The Trump administration has made a concerted effort to dismantle a host of environmental protections it had put in place His predecessors are Republicans and Democratswhich undermines confidence in green standards.
Rex also highlighted the decline in the number of construction industry professionals who measured the embodied carbon in their projects, such as the carbon emitted in the making of materials such as steel, glass and concrete, or in the construction process itself. Forty-six percent of construction workers reported not measuring embodied carbon, compared to 34% the previous year. Only 16% of respondents said carbon measurement was helpful in selecting materials when designing the project.