Green building is an important measure to deal with energy and environment problems in the construction sector of the world. In this study, knowledge mapping analysis is used, and 3,060 articles are selected for further study (1900–2019). Based on CiteSpace (5.3.R4 SE 64-bit), the knowledge base, hot topics and research trends of green-building-related research are presented. The key highlights of the overall analysis results are: (1) Research on green buildings has received more extensive attention in the 21st century.

The review of policies being implemented in China, the EU, India and the US presented in this report has also identified some key challenges that we must address if we are going to realize the mitigation potential of the building sector. Chief among these is the need to improve our monitoring of the impact that our policies are having. Lack of measured and verifiable data on the influence of policies on building energy performance currently hampers our ability to assess and continuously improve their effectiveness.