Making it Count for Carbon-Conscious Buildings: the data provision landscape

Abstract As the built environment accounts for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions, achieving whole life cycle net zero carbon buildings has become a pressing objective. Reliable, standardized, and transparent data is critical to support WLC accounting, inform design decisions, and underpin regulatory frameworks. This paper presents the interim findings of collaborative research focusing on the role of GHG emissions databases in supporting WLC assessments of buildings. Building on analysis of data coverage and quality, policy integration and institutional support, the paper delineates a global maturity landscape of existing databases. It also outlines current practices and challenges in data provision and devises a reference framework based on features that highlevel data systems should pursue.