The building sector is not on track to lower total greenhouse gas emissions. Given that emissions from the sector represent nearly 40% of global energy-and process-related emissions, this represents a serious challenge to keeping global warming to 1.5oC. The Buildings sector must therefore decarbonize.To support this goal, this report focuses on policy drivers for decarbonisation, and the costs and benefits associated with their implementation.

This study presents a summary of green building research through a bibliometric approach. A total of 2980 articles published in 2000–2016 were reviewed and analyzed. The results indicated that green building research had been concentrated on the subject categories of engineering, environmental sciences & ecology, and construction & building technology, and the keywords ‘building envelope’ and ‘living wall’ obtained citation bursts in the recent years.

Cities are crucial sites for achieving socio-technical transitions in technology and infrastructure systems. Raising building energy efficiency (BEE) through new construction or retrofitting holds particular relevance to sustainability transitions since this requires diffusion of new technologies and energy management practices. In pursuit of this, city policymakers around the world are increasingly utilising mixes of multiple policy instruments.