From Awareness to Action: Insights for a Greener Built Environment

From Awareness to Action: Insights for a Greener Built Environment

August 2025

Buildings are key contributors to climate change, as is the construction process. In its Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction 2024/2025, The UN Environment Programme estimates that the buildings and construction sector consumes 32% of energy globally and contributes to 34% of global CO2 emissions.

How can leaders in the buildings and construction sector instead contribute to a greener future, and make these contributions known to stakeholders? In this article we look at research into green buildings, including a new study, how there’s a business case for adopting green buildings, and the clear case for communicating that adoption.

In Asia Pacific the environmental impact of buildings varies. Consider two of the region’s powerhouses: According to the Council for Carbon Neutrality and Sustainable Development of Hong Kong, buildings account for 50% of carbon emissions in the city, while figures from Singapore’s Green Building Council estimate that buildings account for 20% of carbon emissions.

There is an extensive and growing body of evidence showing that investments in green buildings, including both the construction of new buildings and the retrofitting of old ones, can play a significant role in reducing carbon emissions, through reduced energy consumption, waste reduction, water conservation and more.

New research into green buildings is presented in Awareness to Action: Insights for a Greener Built Environment, a joint report by the Singapore Green Building Council and Schneider Electric, developed together with Sandpiper’s Energy, Environment and ESG practice. While challenges remain, this new report points to some interesting and positive developments.

The study surveyed over 500 senior business leaders based in Singapore from December 2024 to January 2025. Respondents are spread across general management, finance, operations, technology and sustainability; and at the seniority levels of board member, C-level, director and senior manager. 35% come from companies with under 250 employees, 20% from those with 250-999 employees, and 45% from companies with 1,000+ employees.

On the positive side, the report shows that awareness and understanding is very high, with 94% of business leaders polled indicating an understanding of green buildings, up from 89% in a previous study in 2023. Awareness has not translated to action, however, and adoption has not progressed significantly in the past two years – 12.5% say all their company’s operations are supported by green buildings, up marginally from 12% two years ago.

The main challenges in going from awareness and understanding to action are cost and concerns about ROI. Nevertheless, costs of green building adoption are coming down thanks to technological advancements. This is reflected in what the study tells us about intentions – with 74% of respondents planning to increase their green building adoption over the next two years, up significantly from 52% in 2023.

Regulatory pressure is certainly a push factor, with 10% citing regulatory expectations as the main driver (up from a mere 2% in 2023) for green building adoption. This indicates how organisations realise the importance regulators place on green buildings. On the pull side, decreased costs means savings. Over the next 12 months, 46% of respondents expect to achieve cost savings of more than 20% from the use of energy efficiency and sustainability technologies.

The report contains a set of recommendations for business leaders and organisations, in Singapore, Asia Pacific and beyond.

1. Business leaders should broaden their perspectives when calculating the costs and returns from green building adoption: Property owners and/or managers may look beyond immediate returns from short-term increases in rentals and consider the longer-term implications as tenants grow more concerned with attracting talent. Although such softer concerns continue to be overshadowed by economic uncertainties, momentum is likely to build and will reward those with the courage and foresight to make the right moves today.

2. Retrofitting must become a priority: A combination of both regulation and incentives is needed to encourage the retrofitting of older buildings. Singapore has recently upgraded its regulatory requirements for green buildings, but the momentum for such efforts needs to be sustained in the face of challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical circumstances. To mitigate concerns of businesses, step-ups in regulatory requirements can also be accompanied by step-ups in public funding. Greater awareness of standards and incentives may also be necessary, and industry participants will need to collaborate on efforts to promote retrofitting.

3. A larger pool of green building professionals is needed to support companies: As green building standards evolve and technologies improve, the talent pool must grow in both size and skillsets. Retrofitting strategies are particularly complex and require a wider range of expertise. Institutes of higher learning can help support this demand, but companies too must play their part by encouraging upskilling of their workforce.

The research indicates that adoption of green buildings brings benefits in terms of cost savings. Another very important factor alluded to in the first point above is corporate reputation and talent attraction – As a 2023 study from KPMG in the UK shows, green credentials are getting increasingly important for talent, and other stakeholders, when choosing where and with which company to work.

Similar results can be found in a global 2022 study surveying 2,000 students and conducted by Yale Center for Business and the Environment. It found that 51% of students are willing to accept a lower salary to work for a company with better environmental practices, and 26% would not accept a job at a company with poor practices (up from 19% in 2015).

Adopting green buildings, either in new-builds or by retrofitting older buildings, makes business sense – both in terms of cost savings, and from a reputational standpoint. Business leaders and communicators can realise the added reputation capital by strategically communicating green building adoption, to regulators, clients, talent and other stakeholders. This requires a deep understanding of both green building practices and the reputational aspects of business operations.

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