The need to implement sustainable development (SD) in the construction industry has given birth to the green building (GB) movement. GB is a promising construction approach through which the construction industry contributes to SD. However, the adoption of GB has been hampered in many parts of the world by numerous barriers. To date, no attention has been paid to the need to review existing knowledge of barriers affecting GB adoption. This paper presents a systematic review of literature on barriers to GB adoption published in academic journals.

The International Energy Policy & Programme Evaluation Conference was held on 7-9 June 2016 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The purpose of the conference is to provide a forum for the presentation, critique and discussion of objective evaluations, as well as for experience sharing about evaluation practices. The conference aims at gathering new ideas, inputs for current and upcoming debates, experience feedback and lessons learnt about all the stages of evaluations (preparation, realisation, analysis of results, evaluation use).

The global buildings sector is responsible for 30% of final energy consumption and more than 55% of global electricity demand. Progress towards sustainable buildings is advancing, but improvements are still not keeping up with a growing buildings sector and rising demand for energy services. The buildings and buildings construction sectors combined are responsible for 36% of global final energy consumption and nearly 40% of total direct and indirect CO2 emissions.

Building energy efficiency has been identified as a cost-effective opportunity to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and a variety of policies are being implemented to harvest this efficiency potential. However, there are growing concerns about a gap between predicted or expected energy consumption levels in buildings and the actual measured energy consumption in operation, both at an individual building level as well as in the building sector as a whole.

The purpose of this study was to complete a literature review of the economic assessment of the costs, benefits and methods for the construction of houses that are designed and built to standards that exceed the minimum requirements as defined by the Building Code. The scope included international and local assessments, academic and grey literature and industry material such as facts sheets. Key findings Many studies focused on energy savings as the sole benefit.