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Before the Industrial Revolution, city growth was limited—factors like disease, food scarcity, resource constraints and limited transport options, kept cities smaller.
Since then, cities have grown hugely, while technology and structural shifts have changed the way they and their buildings meet our needs for shelter, energy, and connection.
Today the building sector (existing buildings and new construction) accounts for 37% of global emissions, and most will still be standing in 2050. Net Zero targets hinge on reducing emissions from existing and new structures.
Existing buildings account for 28% of global emissions each year. If we are to have any chance of meeting global climate targets these need to be brought down through retrofitting.
This is not just a climate need; building owners face growing risks from energy-inefficiency discounts and potential asset stranding as regulators tighten efficiency requirements.
So why are retrofits only happening at a rate of 1% a year, a third of what is required? Scaling retrofits will require higher confidence in a green building premium, improved availability of finance, and addressing supply chain bottlenecks.
The world needs to add building floor area the size of Paris every week from now until 2050 to accommodate growing populations, particularly in the Global South where most new building will occur.
Society’s essential asks of buildings tend not to change over time. What changes is how buildings meet these needs. This is shaped by today’s megatrends: urbanization, demographic change, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and climate change.
The biggest change facing new building is the need to minimize emissions. Some techniques and technologies to do this remain in the pipeline, but many already exist today.
Megatrends like urbanization and climate change will increasingly challenge the current mix and location of buildings.
Some, either due to age, changing local needs, or rising physical climate risks, are no longer fit for purpose in their current form. Where this is the case we should be prepared to reimagine them and the space they occupy.
Three options are available: usage change, like office-to-residential conversion; demolition and rebuild, to achieve co-benefits like densification, or decommissioning altogether and re-wilding the space.
With over 90% of the world’s GDP now covered by Net Zero commitments, governments have implicitly signed the sector up for full decarbonization. An annual reduction of 3.6% feels temptingly easy, but left unchecked buildings’ current emissions will double by 2050.
Three market barriers stand in the way: the lack of sustainability information flowing up and down the building value chain; insufficient rewards for better buildings, and inadequate penalties for worse buildings.
Existing market failures, such as the lack of comparable building emissions data, stifles new approaches to regulation and capital allocation.
A discussion on laying the foundation for better buildings.
Richard Mylles and William Nicolle discuss the crucial role of creating better buildings to deliver sustainable outcomes, particularly the need for a whole-value-chain approach to help deliver on the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Discover more insights about laying the foundation for better buildings in our white paper.
Retrofit revolution—Why the world needs one and how we can achieve it
We make the case for a retrofit revolution, not just to bring the building stock into line with the Paris climate goals, but also to address social challenges like fuel poverty and the health issues caused by drafty or poorly ventilated buildings. We then outline the key factors holding retrofitting back, and describe seven essential steps which can help to unlock it.
Under one roof—Public and private roles to catalyze sustainable building
We assess the opportunities for public and private stakeholders to collaborate in the drive to decarbonize the global buildings sector. Market barriers require public institutions to provide incentives that move the needle, while the level of capital required, and the need for innovation on some technologies, creates an important role for private institutions too.
Building society—Optimizing the social impacts of buildings
We look at how to improve the social impacts of the buildings sector. This includes the need to improve the sustainability and welfare characteristics of construction supply chains, how to marry retrofitting with regeneration, and how to ensure all communities, not just those in wealthier areas, benefit from the retrofit revolution.
Global scale, breadth and depth
Investing since 1943, we actively manage real estate investments globally across the major real estate sectors, both directly and indirectly, as one of the largest real estate managers worldwide. Our offering ranges from core to opportunistic, to open and closed-end private structures, REITs, commingled and customized investment structures, individually managed accounts, and real estate securities.
UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index 2023
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Be it installing energy-efficient LED lighting in offices, water-efficient irrigation systems for landscaped areas or turning roofs into power plants, we’re doing a lot to make our UBS buildings green. In fact, we've committed to an ambitious goal: that all our main buildings are certified according to green standards, including those of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), an international benchmark for sustainable construction worldwide. This certification covers criteria such as the sustainability of sites, water efficiency, energy, materials, resources and environmental quality and can be applied to buildings and construction projects, interior design, operations and maintenance processes as well as neighborhood development.
LEED-certified premises worldwide, meeting the highest sustainability standards
LEED platinum certified premises worldwide (highest accolade)
approx. number of electric car charging stations across 32 countries
our commitment to source all electricity from renewables
beehives across 7 green roofs globally
existing and upcoming rooftop solar plants
LEED certification comes in four colors, certified, silver, gold and platinum. For new buildings, we aim for gold certification, but quite often, we’re even more successful. We received LEED Platinum certifications for our headquarters in Zurich after its renovation in 2017, for our UBS offices in Mumbai and Pune in 2018 and UBS offices in Wuxi in 2016. And, in Mexico, our office space has been LEED Platinum certified since 2017. Our new offices in Singapore and Fabryczna offices in Krakow are the latest buildings to be LEED platinum certified.
While our headquarters in Switzerland is LEED Platinum certified, we build and renovate other office spaces according to the Swiss Minergie sustainability standard. Our 5 Broadgate building in London has the British BREEAM Excellent status for the base build and LEED Platinum status for the fit-out.
National standards can even prove to be more suitable for some buildings: we obtained the BD2M Gold environmental rating for our Grand Bretagne 2 building in Monaco. This was originally built in the late 19th century, and we were able to preserve its Belle Epoque facade. BD2M is an environmental label which focuses on the local situation in Monaco – considering the weather conditions (e.g., saline winds coming from the sea), soil, geographical aspects and territorial heritage – as well as internationally accepted social and environmental standards.
