Driving The Ambition Loop: A stocktake on critical levers for net zero transformation in the built environment
Published: November 3, 2025
The built environment plays a central role in achieving global climate goals, representing a significant share of global emissions and resource use. To accelerate its transformation, the Market Transformation Action Agenda (MTAA) was launched at the Buildings and Climate Global Forum (Paris, 2024).
Eighteen months on, this report takes stock of progress and emerging action across the agenda. It explores alignment with parallel intergovernmental platforms and distils recommendations to guide the MTAA’s evolution as a global platform for connecting, coordinating, and amplifying industry leadership.
Seen through the lens of the ambition loop, the MTAA is not just a collection of initiatives, but a mechanism for surfacing and amplifying real-world progress. By showcasing evidence of market readiness and innovation, the MTAA informs and inspires policymaking, strengthening the feedback cycle between industry action and policy ambition that accelerates transformation.
Key highlights include:
- Evidence that industry leaders are already addressing critical barriers to market transformation, demonstrating that transition is both possible and scalable.
- Insights into how early industry action helps build policymaker confidence to raise ambition and adopt enabling policies.
- Examples of policy–industry reinforcement, where shared ambition and complementary action drive rapid transformation.
- Recommendations to strengthen international public–private collaboration on aligning definitions and whole life carbon (WLC) frameworks, mobilizing demand, and building skills and capacity.
This report is intended for industry leaders, policymakers, international organizations, and the wider built environment community. It aims to provide a clear view of how market transformation is unfolding and how collective action can be scaled through alignment, collaboration, and shared ambition.
For more information about this work, please contact ogut@wbcsd.org.