After years of setting targets, applying frameworks and announcing commitments, the sustainability conversation in real estate is changing. Heather Evans looks at what the latest evidence tells us about performance, procurement and the persistent gap between ambition and delivery.
Real estate is under significant capital pressure forcing investors, developers and operators to scrutinise every decision through the lens of risk, return and resilience. In the current market, sustainability is not a standalone objective. Rather, it is increasingly a core determinant of asset performance, liquidity and long-term value creation.
The International Energy Agency has found energy-efficient commercial buildings command sale price premiums of between 13% to 20%. The benefits extend beyond energy bills. Efficiency upgrades can improve thermal, acoustic and light comfort, as well as health, safety and security, which the IEA says can improve tenant satisfaction and reduce vacancy and turnover.
But demonstrating value increasingly means demonstrating performance.
Proof, not promises
Sustainability strategies have revolved around commitments, certifications and design-stage modelling. But operational data, building optimisation and post-occupancy evaluation provide something different: visibility into how assets actually function, rather than how they were expected to perform on paper.
The energy ‘performance gap’ is well documented. A seminal UK study of 28 buildings in 2011 found that operational energy use was up to five times higher than estimates during design. More recently, JLL analysis of around 1,000 sustainability-certified office buildings in Japan found that 53% had deviated from their decarbonisation pathways.
The UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard, launched in 2026, is one response. Developed by a technical steering group representing some of the UK’s leading architecture, engineering, property and building-performance bodies, this requires a full year of metered operational data to verify that a building is performing as claimed. Embodied carbon is also assessed using measured quantities rather than design estimates.
GRESB, the global sustainability benchmark for real estate and infrastructure, provides another indication of how sustainability measurement is evolving. Covering 500,000-plus buildings across 76 markets in 2025, GRESB found the real estate sector was at a “key point of maturity” and was shifting its focus from collecting data to measuring performance.
Measure for measure
Reliable operational data enables asset managers, landlords and occupiers to identify inefficiencies early, understand risks and make informed decisions about investment and operational improvements. As a member of GRESB’s Partner Program, RLB has access to industry-leading data, benchmarking and insights used by more than 150 institutional and financial investors worldwide. Learn more.
Alignment remains a critical challenge
One of the most persistent barriers across the asset lifecycle is that investors, developers, contractors and operators approach sustainability from different positions.
Investors tend to prioritise resilience and long-term value protection, while developers balance viability and delivery pressures. Contractors are driven heavily by cost, program and buildability considerations. Operators focus on performance in use.
This fragmentation is evident in RLB market research. In a poll conducted by RLB among delegates at FOOTPRINT+, the UK’s leading annual conference on built environment decarbonisation, 26% of respondents identified stakeholder alignment as a key barrier while 30% highlighted upfront capital constraints. This underlines a familiar tension between short-term cost pressures and long-term value creation.
The strongest outcomes are typically achieved when sustainability is integrated early enough for all parties to understand the commercial rationale and the environmental ambition. That shared understanding is particularly important in evolving areas, like embodied carbon, where the trade-offs are complex.
Earlier is easier
New research from RLB and Arup, Whole Life Carbon Assessment – Embodied Carbon Quantification in Hong Kong, finds that the greatest opportunities to reduce embodied carbon occur early in a project, when design decisions are still flexible. But fragmented project information and limited standardised, locally relevant carbon data can make those choices harder to quantify. One practical response is closer collaboration between engineers, quantity surveyors and other project stakeholders, bringing carbon and cost information together to make earlier decisions easier.
Integrating sustainability into business cases
Procurement is another place where we can see the gap between sustainability ambition and delivery.
RLB’s 2026 Procurement Trends research found that 24% of contracts include obligations to provide a whole-life carbon assessment, and 25% of contractors reported that tenders provided an embodied carbon brief – up five percentage points in a year.
There are encouraging signs of progress, as more and more, success will depend on the ability to align incentives, decision-making and accountability across the asset lifecycle.
The real estate sector has spent decades developing sustainability frameworks, targets and reporting structures. The coming decade will be defined by integration and execution.
The organisations that lead the market may not have the most ambitious sustainability goals. But they will be able to connect sustainability directly to stronger commercial performance, greater resilience and long-term value creation. They will align stakeholders around shared outcomes, use data to inform better decisions and be transparent about the trade-offs that inevitably exist within complex projects and portfolios.
Sustainability is a fundamental driver of real estate value. As capital becomes more selective, organisations will be judged less by what they say about sustainability and more by the value they create with it.
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