International. Green construction continues to double every three years, with stronger acceleration in emerging economies, and with customers and tenants around the world increasingly demanding for sustainability – both for energy efficiency and for the benefit of occupants.
These results and others on Dodge Data & Analytics' green building world trends report, with funding from United Technologies, were announced by Bob McDonough, President of UTC Climate, Controls & Security, at the 2015 Greenbuild International Summit in Washington, USA.
The new report surveyed more than 1,000 architects, engineers, contractors, owners, specialists and consultants in 69 countries to understand their current involvement in the green building project and expectations for the year 2018. In addition to expanding the sample size by more than 25% over the 2012 study, the new report also has a higher percentage of participation from architects and contractors across a greater number of countries.
Green building trends:
- Across all regions studied, respondents project that more than 60% of their projects would be green projects in 2018, with a doubling of ongoing projects across the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, South America and sub-Saharan Africa.
- The largest percentage of green building activity remains in the commercial construction segment, which comprises 46% of respondents' future green building projects.
- Activity in institutional buildings: schools, hospitals and public buildings, are expected to surpass green construction projects in existing buildings (38 and 37% respectively) in 2018.
Green building drivers:
- Forty percent of respondents pointed to customer demands as a driver for green building activity, followed by environmental regulations (35%). Both categories increased during the 2008 and 2012 responses.
- An improvement in the benefits of occupants and tenants of green buildings emerged in the 2016 report, with healthier neighborhoods (15%), a higher return on investment (11%) and employee hiring (5%) increasing as drivers.
- In terms of social motivations, respondents rated sustainable business practices as encouraging as the most important benefit of green building (68%), followed by its ability to support the domestic economy, create a sense of community, and increase worker productivity (all by 50% or more).
- From an environmental perspective, reducing energy consumption (84%) and reducing water consumption (76%) topped the list as important.
