UKGBC Launches 2025 Strategy to accelerate change towards critical 2030 date

UKGBC has today shared its 2025 Strategy, and Annual Operating Plan for the coming year, with a renewed focus Driving impactful change across the industry.

On the 11th May, UKGBC brought its Gold Leaf Members together for the first time since the pandemic for not only networking but also to share our new 2025 Strategy. The response was overwhelmingly positive, so it’s great to share the document today with our wider membership and the industry.  

Why a 2025 Strategy?  

The climate emergency remains the most pressing issue facing the built environment. It is directly responsible for 25% of total UK emissions, and as evidenced by UKGBC’s Net Zero Whole Life Carbon Roadmap, continuing a ‘business-as-usual’ approach will simply not deliver net zero by 2050. Instead, the current pace of climate action will only deliver a 60% reduction in carbon dioxide levels compared with 1990 emissions levels; leading to catastrophic and irreversible impacts, adversely affecting lives, livelihoods, and the planet. 

At the same time, the science is clear. We must halve emissions by 2030 if we’re to stand a chance of maintaining a 1.5ºC temperature increase, so it’s the near-term targets and actions that matter the most. Quite simply, we have to go further, faster, now.  

Therefore, UKGBC’s 2025 Strategy gives the charity, its membership and the industry a clear path forward to ensure that we are on track for crucial 2030 targets. In addition to this Strategy, UKGBC has also released its Annual Operating plan for the coming financial year to drive the near-term actions in support of the Strategy.   

What’s in the 2025 Strategy?  

The UKGBC 2025 Strategy sets out a shared industry ambition and industry targets which indicate what must be achieved by 2025. Drawn from science-based data modelling conducted for our Whole Life Net Zero Carbon Roadmap published in 2021. the Strategy also points to shared targets that have yet to be developed for both climate resilience and environmental net gain. This is ultimately where the built environment sector needs to get to. To drive progress towards these, UKGBC has set itself seven clear goals in relation to both Government and Businesses that will drive the transformational shift in the way we design, construct, operate and reuse built assets to achieve the industry ambition and targets.  The goals will in turn inform and cascade into the key work priorities that UKGBC takes forward over the next three years. 

What’s in our Annual Operating Plan? 

Informed by our Strategic Goals and insight and feedback from members, our ’22-’23 AOP captures our key priorities for the year ahead. These are numerous and overlapping – so presenting them in a linear list fails to reflect the complex interconnectedness between our different strands of work. Yet in each year out to 2025, we will adopt a new AOP to maintain momentum and measurable progress against the 2025 Strategic Goals.   

What does the UKGBC 2025 Strategy mean for our members?  

In addition to the release of the 2025 Strategy, UKGBC has also evolved our work programme to create even more opportunities for engagement and impactful collaboration, both inside member organisations and more widely across the industry.  Through these, our members will:  

  • Be empowered to accelerate their own sustainability journeys by participating in UKGBC convened initiatives and projects – where we unite around a common purpose, collaborate, share knowledge and lessons learnt. 
  • Enjoy access to cutting edge insights and solutions that will shortcut your learning journeys. 
  • Be engaged and consulted to evolve definitions of ‘what good looks like’ and to showcase your remarkable achievements as sustainability pioneers. 
  • Equip their teams with the knowledge, skills, capabilities and leadership mindsets that they need to radically transform their business models. 
  • Unite as a progressive and united voice to those in positions of power – demonstrating the art of the possible and calling on government to change the rules of the game.  
  • Be part of a network with influence across all corners of the UK – with a specific focus on devolved nations and areas identified as priorities for the Levelling Up agenda. 

And internally UKGBC will continue to: 

  • Remain lean, efficient, and productive – drawing ever more on the experience and expertise of our members to make change happen. 
  • Diversify our income sources – with a view to becoming less reliant on members to fund the important workstreams ahead.  

We are under no illusion that achieving the industry targets will be challenging, but UKGBC is committed to catalysing the change required and working with each and every one of our members, and the industry and political spheres beyond, to drive the transformation that is so urgently needed. 

Related downloads

Download The 2025 Strategy

Download836.70 Kb

Download Ukgbc’s Aop Fy 22/23

Download103.95 Kb

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