On May 19, 2026, UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) and GlobalABC launched the tenth edition of the Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction 2025–2026 at the World Urban Forum in Nairobi.

The title says it all: Building Fast. Falling Short.

The report assesses annually whether the buildings sector is aligned with the Paris Agreement. In 2026, the answer was no. Worth noting: decarbonization has been losing momentum since 2020.

Over the past ten years, buildings have become measurably more efficient. The built area grew by 20%, but energy demand rose only 11%. Stricter codes and efficiency investment worked. Since 2015, the sector has accumulated US$ 2.3 trillion in investments moving in that direction.

And yet operational emissions rose 6.5% over the same period. The problem is not the individual building, it is the volume and pace of global construction.

Construction growth is concentrated in emerging economies — especially India and Southeast Asia — where demand for housing and infrastructure is real and urgent. Energy efficiency codes still do not cover most of that new construction.

Renewables supplied only 17.3% of building energy demand in 2024, well short of what a net-zero trajectory requires.

The report identifies a second structural problem: most analyses still separate operational emissions from embodied emissions. The carbon released to manufacture, transport, and install construction materials is left out of the equation in most global regulations.

To align the sector with climate targets, the report estimates that investment in energy efficiency must more than double — reaching US$ 5.9 trillion by 2030, or US$ 592 billion per year.

Today, the sector invests US$ 275 billion annually in that direction.

The positive side: the European Union has advanced policies that also cover embodied carbon in materials. California, Kenya, Japan, and Singapore have updated their efficiency codes. Green certifications have nearly tripled in ten years — though the report acknowledges that alone is not enough.

Beyond climate, the report focuses on asset risk and operating cost.

Buildings constructed today with low efficiency standards will operate with higher energy bills, more expensive maintenance, and growing difficulty meeting regulatory requirements that are only likely to get stricter.

The report also signals pressure reaching the credit market: efficiency investment is increasingly a condition for accessing financing — not just a selling point. And embodied carbon in materials is entering the regulatory frameworks of countries leading the agenda, including the European Union.

For markets where most of the 2050 building stock has yet to be built, the design decisions made today carry decades of impact.

Those who anticipate performance criteria early will not only reduce regulatory risk — they will also improve the operating costs of what they deliver to the end client.

UGREEN has been around since 2016.

In that time, we have worked with ArcelorMittal, Roca, Rain Bird, and Saint-Gobain. We reduced carbon emissions from a ceramic industry by 33%.

We certified schools, hotels, and retail stores. We trained teams at companies that were losing contracts because they could not answer one simple question: what actually makes this sustainable?

The UGREEN Pass is where that knowledge lives. Over 400 hours of applied content, 8 thematic schools, and practical tools for anyone who needs to make real decisions about climate, energy, water, materials, carbon, and certifications.

This is not an awareness course. It is a method for people who work in this field or want to build expertise in it.

On May 15, architects, engineers, designers, and representatives from the construction industry gathered at the FIEP Event Center in Curitiba for the first edition of Green Building Day XP — a format created by UGREEN to be smaller, denser, and more hands-on than the main Green Building Day.

Filipe Boni and Sami Meira opened the afternoon with a direct question: why do Brazilian buildings keep repeating the same performance problems? Excessive heat, high energy bills, and thermal discomfort have a known cause. They are the result of decisions about orientation, specification, and construction systems made without bioclimatic criteria — and repeated for decades.

Each table received a challenge: define strategies to make a building more sustainable in Manaus, Brasília, and Curitiba — three cities with completely different climates and design logics. While attendees debated, Filipe ran live simulations on screen. Cross-table exchanges started, last-minute questions came up, and the kind of technical discussion that usually stays in the hallway happened in the room.

"I didn't even notice the time passing," one participant wrote in their feedback.

In the second block, Ana Julia Kfouri walked through the main environmental certifications for buildings — LEED, EDGE, AQUA-HQE, WELL, and Selo Casa Azul (a Brazilian residential certification) — anchoring the discussion around one practical question: when is it worth certifying, and when is it not?

Next, Sami Meira presented the Brazilian Sustainable Taxonomy. Established by Decree 12.705/2025, it links access to green credit to verifiable environmental performance criteria starting in 2027. Those without auditable data will either pay more to finance or lose access to credit lines altogether.

Most attendees stayed until 9 PM — two and a half hours after the official close. In their feedback, participants described the content as "instructive and accessible" and highlighted how approachable the speakers were: "great networking, especially because the speakers were so easy to talk to."

Curitiba was the first city. UGREEN is evaluating bringing the XP format to other cities in Brazil in 2026. Nothing confirmed yet — but those who want to be notified early know where to find us.

The construction sector accounts for 15% of global water use.

In Brazil, the industry competes for the same resources as agriculture in regions where water availability is already limited.

This is not new data. What changed is what the financial market started doing with it.

Brazil’s Sustainable Taxonomy, regulated by Decree 12.705/2025, included water efficiency among the technical requirements for access to green credit lines.

In practice: developments that cannot document water consumption, reduction measures, and water footprint across their life cycle are excluded from certain financing options.

Caixa Econômica Federal is already developing a dedicated housing credit line for certified buildings, backed by federal government and World Bank funding.

On May 13, at the Fiesp Salão Nobre in São Paulo, SindusCon-SP launched CEHídrica: a water footprint calculator for buildings, integrated with CECarbon, which the sector already uses to track carbon emissions.

CDHU, which already used CECarbon in its projects, announced it will adopt CEHídrica across its entire construction supply chain.

The event brought together more than 160 participants, including representatives from ANA, Caixa, and GBC Brasil.

Our co-founder, Sami Meira, participated as a speaker, presenting on the topic “Industry communication and awareness around water footprint actions.”

The focus was direct: what the Taxonomy requires from those seeking green credit, and how to communicate sustainability data in an auditable way, not just a declarative one.

CEHídrica and CECarbon are already integrated, allowing construction companies to manage carbon and water within the same monitoring system.

Companies that have not yet implemented this process enter these negotiations without a data track record, without a baseline for progressive reduction, and without the minimum documentation that financiers are beginning to require.

Every winter, mold appears in the same spot. In the corner of the wall, near the ceiling, behind the wardrobe. You clean it, repaint, and open the windows more often. The following winter, it’s back.

The most common explanation is that the occupant is doing something wrong. Not enough ventilation. The apartment is naturally humid.

But in most cases, the problem has nothing to do with how the space is used. It was decided long before construction was finished, at a stage of the project when nobody was thinking about winter yet.

What happens is that the wall doesn’t behave uniformly in the cold. There are points where heat escapes much faster than others. At those points, the inner surface cools down first. And when the warm, humid air inside the room meets that cold area, moisture condenses.

The wall gets wet. Mold grows. Year after year, in the same spot.

Watch the full video on YouTube and find out why mold keeps coming back, where it really comes from, and what can be done to prevent it.

Disclaimer: The video is in Brazilian Portuguese, but simultaneous translation and subtitles are available in multiple languages.