Decarbonizing ASEAN’s Built Environment PART 1: Business & Stakeholder Workshop

Date: 19 May 2026
Time: 14:00 – 17:00
Venue: Paya Lebar Quarter Tower 2, #10-08, Singapore (JLL Office)
Partner: JLL

ASEAN’s real estate sector sits at a critical inflection point. With a strong emphasis on energy efficiency and operational emissions from buildings, embodied carbon from new construction and renovation works is increasingly coming into focus as well. Driven by regulatory pressure, investor expectations and occupier demand, built environment stakeholders in the region are grappling with three interlinked challenges: the need to stay competitive and resilient by addressing buildings’ energy demand and cost, getting to understand the business case for reducing the embodied carbon of buildings across their full life-cycle, and to adapt buildings to the changing climate conditions.  

This WBCSD workshop will introduce the Market Transformation Action Agenda for the Built Environment to the ASEAN business community to foster the deep collaboration that is required along the full value chain to transform a fragmented and short-term focused sector.  

The Action Agenda brings together leading businesses to collaborate on the key collective interventions that drive change, and it creates an Ambition Loop with governments to enable business to drive innovative solutions for decarbonization. The Action Agenda is structured along 3 transformational levers all stakeholders need to focus on:

1. Adopt Whole Life Carbon assessment along the full value chain and align key indicators, metrics, and targets;
2. Integrate carbon cost and reflect it in the price of products and services throughout the value chain;
3. Transform the supply and demand dynamics to incentive low-carbon solutions based on the Whole Life Carbon approach

The workshop will focus on Levers 1 and 3 of Market Transformation: Clear demand side signals grounded in the consistent quantification of whole life carbon performance of built assets can drive sustainable innovation along the full value chain and enhance the business case for action.  

Workshop participants representing developers, asset owners, financiers, occupiers and solution providers will discuss:

• What whole life carbon assessment means and why it matters strategically and commercially, how it can be measured (practical case studies), and what levers and solutions are available in design, construction and procurement to tackle whole life carbon emissions;
• How to unlock the strategic opportunity of retrofitting commercial real estate by addressing the key financial and stakeholder misalignment barriers, thereby reducing business risk due to energy market instability;
• How business and policymakers can work together to strengthen the enabling environment for the transformation.