Dive Brief:
- Green building certifications are expanding across the U.S. as demand remains strong for performance-based sustainability standards, according to BRE Global, a firm providing building assessment and certification through its BREEAM standard. BREEAM stands for Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method.
- In 2025, BREEAM certifications in North America grew by more than 90% compared with 2023, indicating the certification’s growing role in the commercial real estate sector, BRE Global said in its BREEAM USA 2025 year in review report. Expansion of the UK-based sustainability assessment certification was led by California, Texas, Minnesota, Tennessee and Indiana, according to a release.
- “Our momentum is notable not just for its scale, but for where it’s happening and how clearly it tracks broader real estate fundamentals,” Breana Wheeler, U.S. director of operations at BRE Global, said in a statement. “We’re seeing strong adoption across states that represent a meaningful share of U.S. economic output, including markets that haven’t historically been associated with sustainability leadership. It’s indicative of a broader shift in market behavior—sustainability performance is increasingly a primary lens for owners and investors as they assess long-term value, resilience, and risk.”
Dive Insight:
Growing adoption of BREEAM in the U.S., alongside continued momentum in Canada, points to accelerating demand for resilient, lower-carbon buildings in both established economic centers and expanding North American markets, BRE said.
Both BREEAM and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating deal with a building’s environmental sustainability, but BREEAM uses licensed assessors to examine evidence against the credit criteria as opposed to design teams sending in data to be examined; and while LEED’s thresholds are based on percentages, BREEAM uses quantitative standard, according to Prologis.
Over 60 projects were certified by BREEAM in California in 2025, followed by Texas, the second-largest regional market by volume of assets certified in 2025. Minnesota, Tennessee and Indiana more than doubled the amount of certified projects in that time, while Alabama, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Utah all saw their first BREEAM-certified projects in 2025, BRE said.
The firm noted that industrial properties is BREEAM’s strongest asset class, “driven in large part by its ability to support long-term value creation in triple-net lease portfolios, where aligning sustainability performance across owners and tenants is more complex but directly supports durability and operational efficiency.”
Certifications were adopted across a diverse range of asset classes, according to the report, with student accommodation certifications growing 250% from 2023 to 2025. Adoption in multifamily and office projects showed BREEAM certification growth of 56% and 41%, respectively, “as owners and operators more consistently applied performance-based frameworks across varied property types,” BRE said.
In addition to certification growth, BRE in 2025 joined coalitions and partnerships aimed at advancing reporting frameworks, performance metrics and benchmarking standards. These include the Embodied Carbon Harmonization and Optimization project, or ECHO, a coalition aimed at aligning life cycle assessment methodologies, data reporting frameworks and embodied carbon standards.
In addition, BRE joined a partnership with the the U.S. Green Building Council, the International WELL Building Institute, the International Living Future Institute, mindful MATERIALS, and Green Building Council of Australia aimed at creating consistency across rating systems including BREEAM, Green Star, LEED, Living Building Challenge and WELL, BRE said.
Led by mindful MATERIALS, the collaboration is an effort to establish shared performance metrics, reduce duplication in benchmarking and reporting, and support more transparent, intentional material decisions, BRE said in the release.
BREEAM also will roll out Version 7 of its standard, currently available for new construction, to its refurbishment and fit-out and in-use standards in an attempt to further align new and existing assets under performance frameworks, BRE said.
Although measures needed to obtain certification under the newest versions of BREEAM and LEED may increase upfront costs and technical complexity, the pay-off is substantial and must be considered alongside capital expenses at the onset of projects, JLL said in an analysis of green building standards.
For example, both BREEAM and LEED award points for advanced, more expensive HVAC systems that can adapt to changing energy demands and reduce operational carbon emissions; they also recognize the use of more environmentally friendly construction materials with lower embodied carbon footprints, requiring organizations to “rethink procurement strategies to source new equipment and materials,” JLL says.
