Sustainability Certification Systems in 2025

Those of us that have been active in the green building industry for more than a decade grew up with certification programs like LEED and GRESB. These programs provided a shared vocabulary for the market. In the early days of green building, these programs provided guideposts for the journeys our clients were on and accelerated change by giving owners a platform that encouraged continuous learning and competition.

As the organizations managing these certification programs have evolved from start-ups to incumbents, and the pace of change in the market has accelerated, it is a question whether certification programs alone can continue to deliver what the industry needs.

LEED continues to create positive change in the market by normalizing activities that allow owners to incorporate responsible practices into their management of buildings. These include activities that are now well established like energy modeling, as well as newer activities like requesting environmental product declarations (EPDs) from material suppliers.

For individual assets, LEED has been a reliable signifier of good management; it has been a less reliable signifier of good building performance. Market leaders, who have created higher performing assets in terms of carbon, health and circularity, are looking for better ways to communicate the differentiation they have created.

We believe building labelling has the potential to effectively communicate an asset’s current progress/position relative to global targets and relative to other assets. Asset value will be made clear by reporting its measured performance across a set of key metrics.

To test this thesis we are working with clients to test metrics that they can use internally and in collaboration with their peers. This allows them to get comfortable with raw performance values and potential processes to normalize the results across different assets and classes. We expect (and we are encouraging) labelling to emerge in the market and allow property managers, asset managers, investors and potential purchasers to better incorporate sustainability performance into their evaluation of assets. Please call us if you want to participate.