Built Environment
Catalysing the transition to an inclusive, climate and nature positive built environment.
Opportunity
Everyone is affected by buildings and the spaces around us: we live, work and play in buildings. In purely financial terms, real estate is the most valuable commodity on the planet, and it has a carbon footprint to match as the built environment is also one of the biggest polluting sectors.
The transition our built environment must go through to meet climate goals poses an opportunity to deliver better living conditions for communities and working conditions for the millions in construction. Yet there are also substantial social risks. It is vital that residents and workers have a central role in deciding what the built environment’s transition looks like, so that no one is left behind.
-
90%
of our time is estimated to be spent indoors. Creating healthy, sustainable spaces is crucial for wellbeing -
37%
of global carbon emissions come from the built environment -
USD 300 trillion
real estate is the largest global asset class, highlighting the sector's significant impact
Intervention
We foster collaborations among cities, industry, investors, workers and residents to influence industry practices and public policies. Through our two interventions, we support our partners to highlight best practice for urban development that ensures affordability, reduces emissions, and creates equitable spaces for communities to thrive.
Enable the implementation of the built environment’s transition roadmaps and legislation for an inclusive, climate and nature positive industry.
We champion buildings and cities that not only support ecological health but are vibrant spaces for their inhabitants. Our commitment is to slash the carbon footprint of buildings through their materials and energy use. Our partners work on a diverse range of issues with a common goal: creating urban environments that are good for people and planet.
Support socially inclusive business models that ensure workers, residents and communities are centred in the built transition.
We support the agency, inclusion, and accountability of those most impacted in the built environment’s transition. Advocating for policies that promote labour rights and affordable quality housing, we collaborate with stakeholders to lay the groundwork for buildings that thrive and enrich the lives of those who call them home.
Where we focus
We concentrate our efforts where we believe they can have the greatest impact, such as:
• Building-level performance: engaging with policy and ‘demand-side’ actors, such as investors, financial institutions, developers, designers, insurers, asset owners/managers, and public authorities.
• Whole Life Carbon Emissions: focusing on circularity and sufficiency, not just energy.
• Social impacts: addressing social impacts directly connected to the sector's decarbonisation, such as labour rights and the impacts on residents.
• European countries: concentrating our efforts on countries within Europe, where we believe we can best leverage our networks to rally industry, investors, and policymakers to accelerate a just transition.
Out of scope
Areas outside our current focus:
- Infrastructure and public spaces: infrastructure projects or public spaces beyond buildings.
- Product-level focus: manufacturing and supply-side technologies and processes, including steel and cement decarbonisation.
- Reskilling: re-skilling directly exceeds our current capacity – though we fund advocacy for EU/state funding to support reskilling.
- Social impacts unrelated to decarbonisation: social issues that are not directly connected to decarbonisation, such as homelessness.
- Niche financial products: financial products that cannot demonstrate a pathway to replacing significant sections of the capital.
Industry Transformation Initiative
Built by Nature
Built by Nature, founded by Laudes Foundation, is a network and grantmaking fund dedicated to accelerating the timber building transformation in Europe.
Built by Nature aims to radically reduce embodied carbon; safely storing carbon in our buildings for generations; and sequestering carbon by championing forest stewardship and regeneration. Its network supports pioneering developers, architects and engineers, asset owners and managers, investors and insurers, city leaders, academics, researchers, non-profits and policymakers in their journey to decarbonise our built environment and protect nature.
Visit Built By Nature
What we fund
Explore the initiatives we fund
grant databaseEligibility criteria
Our grants fund partners to work collaboratively on brave initiatives that can contribute to systemic industry change.
Becoming a partnerBEYOND GRANTMAKING
Strong and diverse partners, focused on learning and improvement, drive greater impact.
