Building sustainability at scale: A roadmap for a year of bold action

In our last edition, we examined three megatrends: demographic growth, accelerating climate change, and dwindling natural resources, that are set to shape global construction in 2026. With this context established, the focus now shifts to implementation. To start the year, we have identified six concrete, actionable steps to address these challenges and advance sustainable construction at scale.

• Foster circular design. ♻️ Pressure on natural resources is among the greatest challenges faced by construction, which consumes 40% of worldwide raw material consumption and 15% of freshwater. At Saint-Gobain, we’ve made this issue a core focus – which is why we are delighted to have been recently named, for the second year in a row, on the CDP A-List for our water stewardship. While a major risk, pressure on natural resources also carries tremendous potential for reinvention. Through circular design, reuse (viewing buildings as material banks), and material efficiency, the sector can cut emissions and waste and create even greater value. The key lies in viewing circularity not as a constraint but as a call for innovation!

  
  

• Focus on resilience and adaptation. 🌱 While the transition to sustainable construction often focuses on environmental performance, it tends to overlook a critical aspect: the capacity to resist and adapt to shocks, essential to the health and well-being of communities in a world shaken by extreme weather events and energy and geopolitical shocks. Strengthening resilience requires rethinking building design, embracing new technologies, and developing innovative solutions. Concrete solutions could include making resilience a mandatory criterion in all requests for proposals (RFPs), embedding it into building codes and urban planning processes, or launching a resilience pledge by which stakeholders publicly commit to clear, measurable climate adaptation goals. 

• Build more with less. 🏗️ Meeting the demographic challenge and rising demand for housing requires a new era of construction, both more efficient and more sustainable. This means prioritizing large-scale renovation and reuse of existing buildings over new-build whenever possible, as well as turning to prefabrication, a surefire way to reduce construction waste. 

• To turn these ambitions into reality, a shift in methods is essential – and requires implementing a few steps.

• Think “user” first. 👤 At Saint-Gobain, we’ve extolled the virtues of client-powered innovation as a way to create effective solutions that address real-world problems and accelerate the low-carbon transition. On a broader scale, thinking “user-first” also means developing approaches tailored to the needs of emerging economies, where the economic, energy, and social landscapes call for specific methods. One way to achieve this? Developing a localized building code framework for emerging economies. When it comes to sustainable construction, there is no “one-size-fits-all”! 

• Make the value of sustainable construction tangible. 📈 Even as it picks up momentum, sustainable construction continues to be seen as complex, expensive, and hard to scale up. In turn, this perception hinders investment, innovation, and adoption, while ignoring the hidden costs of inaction. To remedy this, the sustainable construction ecosystem must measure what truly matters: lifecycle costs and benefits, rather than upfront investment. To this end, a global “sustainable construction compass” could map the highest ROI measures by region, building type, and project phase, serving as an advocacy tool to unite policymakers, industry and investors around the most impactful solutions. Equally useful would be quantifying the added costs of non-resilient construction when major climate events occur, demonstrating the value of sustainable construction. 

• Join forces. 🤝 Cooperation between sustainable construction actors is on the rise, but remains fragmented, with limited alignment at national and international levels. Because true transformation requires coordinated action, stakeholders must collaborate more closely on projects and regulatory frameworks and communicate more on the sector’s importance. This could mean developing digital tools and training programs to guide sustainability decisions at each stage of a construction project, as well as developing national building regulations grounded in data, or establishing global innovation and demonstration hubs.

What do these steps have in common? 💡 A few things: they’re feasible, they’re actionable, and they we can start implementing them today, as a united sustainable construction ecosystem. What better resolution for the year ahead?