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.

This paper presents a comprehensive literature review of what drives the adoption of green building (GB) practices among construction stakeholders. The review is based on literature that have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Through a systematic review of the literature, authors are able to identify generic drivers for stakeholders to pursue GB. A total of 64 drivers were identified from reviewing 42 selected empirical studies. The paper presents a classification framework for the GB drivers.

The reliability, security, and sustainability of energy generation and supply are of global importance and the building sector accounts for up to 32% of total energy consumption, which makes it a key player in the domain. Previous research has identified that the actual energy consumption in buildings could be as much as 2.5 times of the predicted or simulated.