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Global building floor space expanded by 20% between 2015 and 2024, while energy demand rose by 11%, according to a new UN report.
The report says energy efficiency improvements and stricter building codes have slowed the growth of energy demand despite rapid construction.
Operational emissions from buildings still rose by 6.5% over the decade to reach 9.9 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2024.
The report warns that rapid urban expansion could lock in future emissions unless governments adopt whole-life carbon policies and low-carbon materials.
In India rooftop solar and sustainable building codes are seen as key to reducing emissions from the construction sector.
Despite a 20 per cent increase in global building floor space — the total usable area inside residential and non-residential buildings worldwide — over the past decade, energy demand from buildings rose by only 11 per cent, suggesting that stricter building codes and energy efficiency measures are helping slow emissions growth even as construction accelerates, according to a new United Nations report,
However, the paper also warned that rapid urban expansion is creating a dangerous “lock-in” of future emissions. In India, the construction sector expanded by 11 per cent from 2024 to 2025, reaching a valuation of $210 billion.
The findings come from the latest United Nations Environment Programme and Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction report, Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction 2025-2026, released May 19, 2026. The sector remains far off track from climate goals despite gains in energy efficiency, the paper found.
Without improvements in energy efficiency, energy demand from buildings would have increased at twice the current pace, the paper said. Global building energy intensity, or the amount of energy a building consumes annually relative to its size, has dropped by 8.5 per cent since 2015, while cumulative investments in building energy efficiency have reached $2.3 trillion.
However, operational emissions from buildings still rose by 6.5 per cent over the decade to reach 9.9 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2024. To stay aligned with net zero goals, emissions should instead have fallen by 31.6 per cent during the same period, the report stated.
Global floor area increased by 1.7 per cent in 2024 alone to reach 273 billion square metres — a growth that is equivalent to two Delhis or five Nairobis.
The emissions embedded in conventional materials such as cement, steel and aluminium used in buildings accounted for about 9 per cent of global emissions in 2024, remaining stuck at around 2.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide annually.
To curb these long-term emissions, the report called for governments to adopt “whole-life carbon” policies that account for emissions from extraction, manufacturing, transport, construction, operation and demolition of buildings.
It also urged a shift towards low-carbon and circular materials, including recycled industrial by-products, reused construction materials and bio-based materials such as timber and bamboo.
Technologies needed to decarbonise buildings already exist and are commercially viable, ranging from high-efficiency heat pumps and rooftop solar systems to low-carbon building materials and deep retrofits, the report said. Yet the sector remains stuck in “pilot mode” because of weak regulations, fossil fuel subsidies and slow policy implementation.
As of mid-2025, building energy codes covered around 60 per cent of new construction worldwide, but no mandatory national building codes are yet fully aligned with zero-emission standards. The report called for stronger building codes, mandatory retrofit policies, phase-out plans for fossil fuel heating and cooking, and public procurement rules favouring low-carbon materials and renewable energy systems.
India has accelerated clean energy adoption in buildings through the PM Surya Ghar initiative, which expanded rooftop solar capacity from 1.7GW in 2023 to 4.9GW in the first nine months of 2025, marking a 161 per cent year-on-year increase, the paper said.
The 2024 Energy Conservation and Sustainable Building Code was also highlighted by the UN, which targets efficiency gains of 20 per cent to 50 per cent over conventional commercial buildings, as a key step towards lowering emissions from the country’s rapidly expanding building stock.