With over half of the world’s population living in cities and producing over 70% of carbon emissions, cities play a key role in combatting climate change.

Construction and the operation of buildings are responsible for 38% of global emissions, and there is an urgent need for solutions to help accelerate the decarbonization of the urban built environment to limit the global temperature rise to below 1.5°C.

Although some leaders in sustainable buildings have started to consider social and environmental impacts in their decision-making, many obstacles to investment in net-zero buildings still relate to financing, both real and perceived. The World Economic Forum’s Net-Zero Carbon Cities Building Value Framework seeks to accelerate investment by overcoming these barriers.

The framework proposes that a more holistic decision-making approach, which recognizes the importance of social and environmental outcomes and system performance, is key to increasing capital flow towards decarbonization solutions. The framework guides decision-makers to connect nonfinancial benefits such as “user satisfaction” and “systemic value efficiency” and correlate them with reducing risk or increasing return on investments.

The Building Value Framework has been developed and validated through case studies to understand the investment decisions and evaluate outcomes in real projects. From this process, key insights and a practical checklist (focusing on reducing operational emissions) have emerged to maximize value creation, as illustrated through the presented cases.