Why Measuring Material Emissions Is Key to Cutting Carbon in the Built Environment

Article by World Economic Forum (2026) | Policy, Insurance, Standards, Social Impact

Curator: Michael Zuriff

Washington DC, USA

This post is accessible to all readers.

Why we recommend it: This recent article, published on the WEF platform in collaboration with CapitaLand and the Climate Group’s ConcreteZero initiative, presents Singapore’s newly launched embodied carbon benchmark for concrete as a meaningful milestone: one of the first market-wide references of its kind globally. Because Singapore imports the majority of its construction materials, its procurement decisions carry direct influence over regional supply chains across Southeast Asia, making a local benchmark an instrument of wider market transformation. The central argument is that cutting carbon in the built environment requires shifting attention from future technologies to the decisions that lock in emissions today. Transparent data on embodied carbon enables developers and institutional purchasers to use procurement as a direct lever for impact, turning individual projects into system-level change. This approach represents a clear movement into implementation of decarbonization strategies and reflects the importance of supply chain in reaching ambitious climate goals.

Key takeaways:

- The built environment accounts for nearly 40% of global emissions, with materials and construction responsible for approximately 12% of that total. Concrete alone generates around 8% of global CO₂ emissions, surpassing aviation and shipping combined. Unlike operational emissions, which diminish as energy grids transition to cleaner sources, embodied carbon in building materials is fixed at the moment of procurement. The critical lever is therefore not technology but specification and purchasing decisions made before construction begins.

- Singapore has taken a significant step toward addressing this challenge by developing one of the first market-wide benchmarks for the embodied carbon of concrete, covering approximately 68% of national supply. Launched in February 2026 in partnership with the World Economic Forum’s First Movers Coalition, the benchmark was developed by CapitaLand and the Climate Group’s ConcreteZero initiative. Its central finding is straightforward but consequential: lower-carbon concrete is already commercially available and competitively priced. The barrier to adoption is not supply but the choices made during specification and procurement.

- Singapore’s context gives this benchmark particular regional significance. Because the country imports the majority of its construction materials, its purchasing decisions carry influence beyond its borders. Concrete’s upstream emissions are estimated at 3.7 million tonnes of CO₂e, representing roughly 6% of national emissions, yet most of those emissions occur in regional supply chains outside Singapore’s jurisdiction. Demand is local; impact is global. Coordinating action across the full value chain is therefore essential.

- The benchmark identifies four areas of action. Developers, designers and contractors set material specifications and are the primary demand-side drivers of change. Large institutional buyers, including Microsoft, which is piloting concrete mixes that reduce embodied carbon by more than 50% across its data center program, demonstrate that scale purchasing can shift market norms. Collective demand initiatives such as ConcreteZero and the First Movers Coalition aggregate these signals into commercially credible commitments that make low-carbon projects financeable.

- Certification infrastructure is equally important. Without consistent environmental data and common definitions, comparability breaks down and the risk of misaligned claims increases. The Singapore Green Building Council’s green product certification framework translates life-cycle assessment data into clear performance tiers, enabling structured procurement decisions. When used alongside global rating systems such as the Global Cement and Concrete Association’s framework, benchmarks become dynamic tools for continuous improvement rather than static labels.

- Academic and technical institutions contribute by validating lower-carbon solutions at the project level. A collaboration between the National University of Singapore and Soilbuild Group Holdings successfully upcycled marine clay excavation waste into low-carbon green cement, deployed at Singapore’s first energy-positive logistics hub. The outcome reduced embodied carbon, lowered import dependency and resolved a waste disposal challenge simultaneously.

- The model is now extending beyond concrete and beyond Singapore, with similar community-of-practice structures emerging in Vietnam. The implications are clear: lower-carbon materials exist, the supply is available, and the business case is established. What remains is aligning the systems that govern how buildings are procured, specified and financed to make lower-carbon outcomes the default rather than the exception.

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