A New Coalition Just Formed to Fix the Americas' Biggest Climate Blind Spot
Buildings don't get the headlines that transportation or energy production do, but they should. Existing buildings alone account for roughly 90% of the emissions the building sector will need to tackle by mid-century. That single number is why a new cross-sector alliance, the Sustainable Buildings Collaborative – Americas (SBC Americas), decided the region needed a shared table to work from.
The group held its founding gathering on November 4, 2025, at Greenbuild in Los Angeles. The room wasn't just building owners and sustainability consultants. City officials, utility representatives, investors, insurers, NGOs, and researchers from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Brazil all showed up, which tells you something about how seriously the built environment sector is starting to treat decarbonization as a hemispheric problem rather than a local one.
SBC Americas operates under an MOU with the UN Environment Programme, with the Enniscorthy International Forum serving as secretariat, and it's positioned as the Americas' regional hub within the Buildings Action Coalition's global network. The goal that network is working toward is blunt: near-zero emission, resilient buildings as the standard by 2030, not the exception.
What Actually Came Out of the Room
Rather than issue another statement of intent, the founding members broke into roundtable working groups covering retrofit financing, building performance standards, electrification, low-embodied-carbon materials, resilience, and existing building retrofits. Out of those conversations, three themes emerged as the barriers standing between where the region is now and where it needs to be:
Financial incentives aren't aligned with how retrofit projects actually perform. Capital exists. But typical real estate investors look for 12–14% returns, while retrofit paybacks often run 7 to 10 years or longer. That mismatch, not a shortage of money, is what's keeping capital on the sidelines.
Policy is fragmented across — and even within — regions. Neighboring cities like Boston and Cambridge have different emissions ordinances with different deadlines. Vancouver's building policy looks nothing like Burnaby's next door. For an owner or investor operating across multiple jurisdictions, that inconsistency adds cost and complexity at every turn.
Supply chains and grid infrastructure haven't caught up to demand. Interest in electrification and low-carbon materials is real, but in a lot of markets, the grid can't reliably absorb the load and low-carbon materials are hard to source. One participant from South America described going without power for six to ten hours a day for six months straight — a reminder that infrastructure readiness varies enormously across the hemisphere.
Why the Regional Framing Matters
None of these three challenges is exactly new on its own. What's different is the lens SBC Americas is applying: looking at financing, policy, and infrastructure together, across a hemisphere where Brazil is racing toward COP30 with new performance standards, Canada is deploying billions in retrofit financing, Mexico is managing a nearshoring boom that's outpacing its energy infrastructure, and the U.S. is navigating a patchwork of state and local rules. Those differences aren't just obstacles — they're also where the fastest learning happens, since a solution tested in one market can often be adapted for the next.
This is the first report from a collaborative that plans to keep working. The next phase involves turning these three themes into concrete advocacy plans and frameworks that regional stakeholders can actually put to use.
If you work in building ownership, finance, policy, or utilities anywhere in the Americas, this is worth fifteen minutes of your time. Download the full SBC Americas 2026 Report to see the data, the regional case studies, and the direct feedback from ambassadors shaping this work.
