Exploring the Future of Building Sustainability and Circularity: A Q&A With Susan Sanchez

Industry trends for the next five to 10 years

What major shifts do you expect in building sustainability practices in the next five to 10 years, and what do you think is driving them?

I see four major shifts: 1) digitization of building and construction product data and integrated digital product passports (DPPs) and logs applied to designing the built environment; 2) advancements in AI; 3) circular economy (CE) design in practice; and 4) designing a building with the whole ecosystem in mind. Sustainability will continue to shift further into the digital design phase with predictive analytics for modeling such as building information modeling (BIM). The full lifecycle approach to evaluating whole buildings through LCA and products through environmental product declarations (EPDs) is already integrated into multiple regulations and procurement initiatives. Two examples are the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and U.S. State-level procurement initiatives. Digitation of EPD platforms will scale to meet global requirements versus regional initiatives. We are currently evaluating AI as it relates to sustainable building design and UL 3115, the Outline of Investigation for Safety of AI-Based Products, and how AI can help support more informed decision making and ethical considerations involved in their deployment of these technologies.  

Circular Economy (CE) principles are integrating into building asset reuse frameworks. For example, the framework estimated reusing an existing asset with the appropriate future tenets will have the most minimized carbon impact, and 80% of the building stock required by 2050 already exists today.  

The focus in built environment metrics is no longer solely on carbon impact and emissions during the operations of the building, but also on the embodied carbon from material extraction, through to the end-of-life. Embodied carbon is different from embodied energy, which only accounts for the energy use in all life-cycle phases of the built asset, regardless of energy source. Water has always been included as an impact within the LCA modeling phase, but the focus has been on carbon intensity impacts. There will be more emphasis on both water demand and water effluent impacts in the coming years, especially with resource scarcity and the carbon/water nexus becoming an important criterion to estimate for all new builds.

So, LEED v5 reaches beyond not harming the environment and actually being more proactive and having a positive impact on the environment?

Yes. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) v5 (LEED v5) requires architects and design teams to evaluate climate risk, decarbonization and human health impact at the design phase. Ecosystem health is explicitly included. As mentioned, embodied carbon is also a key component, which means looking at the building system across its entire lifecycle. LEED v5 awards points for these aspects, reflecting how the building interacts with natural systems rather than being treated separately from them. LEED Platinum now requires qualitative reduction metrics to decarbonize and align with new building code standards in the U.S.

What role will new technologies, such as AI or digital twins, play in buildings and construction in the next five to 10 years?

There will be a growing role for AI in sustainability within the built environment where AI and digital twins (DT) continue to converge and expand. Predictive analytics in construction enables concrete designs to help low concrete mixes align with building codes. Concrete is said to be responsible for about six percent of global emissions and is one of the most widely used construction materials on earth. DT and AI enable construction design to provide real-time simulations and monitor and optimize process flows. AI will grow at the material level to identify hot spots within life cycle assessments or EPD analyses as EPD platforms digitize and scale.  

We are involved in the Ai4LCA external technical working group through The American Center for Life Cycle Assessment (ACLCA), focused on understanding how AI could benefit life cycle assessment (LCA), in relation to the existing standards. Validation, context and judgement, scalable oversight, and human responsibility are key areas involved in the working groups. We know all services will be augmented with AI at least to begin with, as human involvement is still required in terms of critical thinking and supporting alignment with ISO standards. UL Solutions has developed an AI standard that addresses multiple parameters for AI to support a focus on how decisions are made and the ethical considerations involved in their deployment  

Regulatory evolution

How are regulatory requirements and standards in this area evolving around the world?

Regulatory requirements, standards and procurement drivers are advancing globally, but changing in scope. Procurement drivers in multiple U.S. states continue to require EPDs, but product carbon footprint (PCF) frameworks are also increasingly requested of suppliers in specific sectors and traceability through DPPs expands to meet regulatory requirements.  Standard development is also changing to harmonize standards and globalize frameworks. For example, the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Product Standard and the ISO 1406X family of environmental management standards will be merged with the GHG Protocol’s Corporate Accounting and Reporting, Scope 2 and Scope 3 standards into harmonized, co-branded international standards. GHG Protocol and ISO are also developing a joint-framework for PCF to align with EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms.  

Digital product passports are increasingly being incorporated into building specifications. These passports allow materials to be traced as they move into products, are recycled or are upcycled within a CE. DPP is part of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), to support transparency across product value chains by providing comprehensive information about each product’s origin, materials, environmental impact and disposal recommendations. Integrating DPPs into Digital Building Logbooks (DBLs) is advancing to harmonize traceability and compliance across sectors. Challenges include unstructured data, a way to organize that data effectively and digital fatigue.

At the state level in the U.S., and in the EU through regulations such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), materials are increasingly required to be evaluated throughout the product life cycle. These approaches allow organizations to identify hot spots, analyze material extraction at the beginning of the life cycle and understand whether materials are reused, embedded into structures or recycled at the end of the life cycle.  

In China, The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued a new regulation, the General Code for Building Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy Utilization, which went into effect on April 1, 2022. Launched to align with the national climate goals of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, Singapore’s green building standards are foundational to the Singapore Green Building Masterplan (SGBMP) and the BCA Green Mark 2021 certification scheme, both part of the Singapore Green Plan 2030.  This includes the “80-80-80 targets in Singapore by 2030,” 80% buildings green by 2030, 80% new developments with Low Energy standard from 2030 and 80% energy efficiency improvement from 2005 for best-in-class buildings by 2030.

Sustainable building materials and circularity

How is the circular economy influencing material selection, reuse and recycling within construction and refurbishment projects?

As concepts such as the Living Building Challenge gain traction, the focus extends beyond individual buildings to their surrounding environments and broader systems.

Resource constraints will also drive circularity as scarcity and bottlenecks in components are already forcing supply chain stakeholders to think through designing ‘in’ circularity.  

I predict that we’ll start to see architects, specifiers and operators treat buildings as living environments, from building design through use and reuse phases. This is reflected in the Living Building Challenge. In this framework, a building is understood as a connection point for light, air, food, nature and the surrounding community in which it operates. Another important shift is toward self‑sufficiency in sustainability. The challenge is to look at the building holistically. For example, how resources within a building can be designed ‘in’ for repair, reuse or repurposing. Regulatory drivers are also requiring buildings to consider additionality as part of the building design and build. One example is the UK, where it is central to policies like biodiversity net gain (BNG) and the strengthened biodiversity duty.  

In ten years, resource scarcity will likely drive efficiency and circularity into the design phase for the built environment. We are already seeing how requirements are changing to Including positive impacts as key criteria. This is reflected in LEED v5, launched earlier in 2026. Version 5 introduces a requirement for a positive impact on nature. Natural ecosystems are considered alongside the built environment itself, rather than something separate from it. Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) also updated in 2025 to emphasize CE principles. China’s 4E assessment framework (Energy, Environmental, Engineering, Economic) aligns most closely with BREEAM In-use and LEED (O+M) systems.

Which verification or governance steps will be essential by 2030 to support credible LCA, EPD and PCF claims?

AI and machine learning will play a growing role in generating and managing data that underpin claims. However, governance and judgement of data quality and fitness for purpose remains critical. 

ISO and EN standards continue to provide foundational frameworks, but they often require additional guidance and interpretation to make them usable. We see that happening at the industry level. LCAs are grounded in ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, EPDs follow separate ISO and EN frameworks, and PCFs have both ISO guidance and sector‑specific frameworks, such as the Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT) and Catena‑X in the automotive industry.

Over the next decade, we will see increased harmonization of datasets and faster data evolution. China is a strong example, where AI is being used to gather material data quickly to assess environmental impacts.

Enterprise sustainability reporting and product‑level sustainability reporting are also converging, particularly through Scope 3 reporting. While AI will support data collection and analysis, rigorous governance will still be needed to evaluate conformity and data integrity. For the first time, ISO and the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol began discussing harmonization efforts last year, marking a significant shift. Life cycle assessment models are also evolving. While traditionally slow and complex, LCA modeling is becoming more efficient with cloud‑based platforms and AI‑driven approaches.

However, quality will remain fundamental. High‑quality input data produces reliable outputs, while poor data leads to inaccurate results. Credible environmental claims will require maintaining trust in data.

Do you see a lot of sharing of sustainability data and practices across the industry?

It depends on the sector, but collaboration is essential. We saw this previously with safety data, testing and certification. In the apparel sector, collaboration around supplier data emerged over a decade ago. That model has continued to evolve into sustainability data sharing. In the automotive sector, Catena‑X emerged after companies identified supply‑chain bottlenecks and collaborated to improve data availability. Digital product passports are reinforcing this trend by enabling transparency and traceability.

EPDs are already publicly available, transparent documents. The Sustainable Products of Trust (SPOT) database from UL Solutions provides access to EPDs and we are seeing customers looking outside of the built environment for developing EPDs for their products, from hand dryers to tires. Clear, transparent and consistent comparability matters. The next challenge is determining who evaluates data quality and consistency. This is currently a major point of global discussion.

So, ensuring all shared data is of consistently high quality is critical?

Yes, but data quality can be evaluated differently depending on the application. Regulatory‑driven LCAs require strict ISO compliance, while higher‑level tools, such as ULTRUS® software from UL Solutions software, may rely on high‑quality secondary datasets as proxies.

Some data gaps will always exist. As data systems mature, evaluation will increasingly rely on a combination of primary data and aligned secondary datasets to reach credible conclusions.

What role will material passports or digital declarations play in improving supply chain transparency by 2030?

As DPPs become mandatory, accuracy, completeness, security and trustworthiness become increasingly important. Digital security and data integrity will be foundational to successful implementation and governance.

Future strategy

How can industry stakeholders strengthen collaboration across the value chain to remain resilient and future‑ready?

Collaboration starts with identifying quality data, assembling that data and scaling it to evaluate a product or process. It requires safeguarding IP while developing modular frameworks to analyze that data. The future is more about actioning on that analyzed data, whether it is for emissions or water impact. This also helps mitigate risk earlier to address resource scarcity and climate change. For suppliers, new ways of supporting data collection and collaboration will be important as they prepare for the future. 

Are individual OEMs driving this, or is it more collective?

Building sustainability data is driven by both sector-specific initiatives and buyers with voluntary targets, such as carbon neutrality commitments, so the drive here is more collective than individual. The MEP 2040 initiative, for example, focuses on architects and specifiers to simplify and scale the internal built environment frameworks and requires members to commit to decarbonization targets. Launched by the Carbon Leadership Forum in 2021, the initiative challenges mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) engineers to radically reduce carbon emissions associated with building systems. The goal is to achieve net-zero operational carbon by 2030 and net-zero embodied carbon by 2040.  

(UL Solutions is a member of the MEP 2040 EPD working group.)