Frédéric Godemel, EVP of energy management at Schneider Electric looks at benchmarking building regulations across Europe.
Across Europe, building regulation is evolving rapidly. Regulations like the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) are putting increasing pressure on building owners and operators to report and improve their buildings’ environmental impact. As the climate crisis accelerates and scrutiny from regulators, investors and stakeholders intensifies, the built environment – which accounts for around 40% of carbon emissions globally - is under the spotlight. Accountability for environmental footprint is no longer optional, its essential.
However, without clear, reliable data, progress is impossible to track, and ambition risks becoming rhetoric. Environmental transparency is fast becoming not only a minimum requirement, but a market differentiator. Building owners and operators that lead on transparency today won’t just be more prepared for the future; they’ll be gaining a powerful edge. With clearer insights, they can cut waste, reduce risk, and build trust with partners and investors alike.
Unlike sectors such as food and finance, which have long been regulated and closely monitored due to health and financial risks, sustainability reporting has historically been voluntary. However, this is now shifting toward a more standardized and mandatory approach, with new regulations like the proposed EPBD, which aim to address greenwashing and promote environmental transparency between businesses and consumers in the building sector.
So, how can we raise the bar for environmental data and empower building owners and operators in their sustainability journeys?
We launched the Environmental Data Program to improve transparency in product environmental data reporting. The program provides detailed, lifecycle-based environmental information on our products, including data on carbon footprint, recycled content, energy efficiency and end of life options. This approach aims to give customers and partners clearer insight into the environmental impact of their choices, especially those relates to building design, construction, and operation.
Why sustainability reporting needs a clearer framework
For years, sustainability reporting has operated in a fragmented landscape. While progress has been made, the tools available to building owners and operators are not keeping pace with the urgency of climate change or the complexity of global supply chains.
Now, as the climate crisis intensifies, the landscape is shifting. Regulations such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and the EPBD are setting clearer expectations for how environmental performance should be measured and reported in the building sector. These are not just regulatory checkboxes, they are powerful signals that sustainability is becoming central to corporate value and long-term resilience.
At the same time, stakeholder expectations are rising. Consumers, investors, and employees alike are demanding not just ambition, but evidence. And businesses are feeling the pressure; today, companies representing two-thirds of global market capitalization now disclose critical environmental data through the Carbon Disclosure Project website, reflecting the scale of transparency demanded by investors and other stakeholders. Sustainability is not a box ticking exercise. It is a competitive advantage. Yet a lack of clear standards and poor data quality is holding everyone back.
Data: The foundation of real progress
True transparency in sustainability goes beyond broad labels and marketing claims. It demands detailed, quality data, that ideally can be comparable and third party verified. This kind of clear, actionable environmental information is essential for accurate sustainability reporting, tracking emissions, and making smarter decisions across the value chain of building development and operation.
Why such detail? Because better data leads to better decisions. The EPBD requires both new and existing buildings to meet increasingly strict energy-efficiency standards. For developers designing new buildings, this means ensuring that every aspect—from the overall electrical design down to individual components—complies with those requirements. That’s where granular data becomes critical. With detailed information on the energy performance of even small parts, like circuit breakers, developers can build with confidence, meet regulations, and deliver buildings that are both compliant and efficient.
By providing consistent, transparent, and easily accessible environmental information, organizations can then empower partners and customers to make more informed decisions, whether it's choosing a supplier or selecting a product for their buildings.
From transparency to comparability
Ensuring high-quality environmental data is the first step toward meaningful impact. The next critical step is making that data comparable. This requires industry-wide collaboration. We need to ensure there’s a common language across the industry, which requires consistent frameworks and standards that guarantee data is both trustworthy and aligned with wider industry benchmarks.
After all, how can anyone determine which product is more sustainable without a common scale for measurement? While transparency lays the groundwork, comparability is what enables data to drive action at scale.
That’s why we’ve gone beyond our legacy Green Premium label and introduced the Environmental Data Program. Through this initiative, we empower our customers and partners to track progress and make informed decisions that support their decarbonization goals. For example, a building operator can access detailed environmental data for electrical parts used in a commercial building - including its carbon footprint, recycled content, and energy efficiency. This means every electrical product in a building, from switchgear to lighting controls, comes with transparent, lifecycle-based data, making it easier to select components that align with sustainability targets and regulatory requirements. We are the first in our industry to disclose such a comprehensive level of environmental data, with over 110,000 products, each with at least 14 environmental data points, representing 70% of our 2024 turnover. This unprecedented scale of transparency sets a new industry benchmark and gives our customers and partners the clarity they need to move forward on their sustainability journey.
But data alone isn’t enough. Companies must also ensure it’s understandable and actionable. That’s how we accelerate innovation, support smarter choices, and drive industry-wide decarbonization. At Schneider, we’re using this data to clearly communicate product impact, enable better decision-making across our ecosystem, and push for the systemic changes needed to support a low-carbon economy.
Building a shared benchmark
Building consistent, transparent sustainability practices across industries requires collaboration. For buildings, this collaboration is especially important- contractors, suppliers, and operators must work together to ensure that environmental data and sustainability benchmarks are embedded throughout every stage of a building’s lifecycle, from design and construction to ongoing operation and maintenance. While businesses play a vital role in driving the innovation and engaging their value chains, the power to formalize and enforce sustainability standards ultimately lies with policy makers and legislators. Their authority is required to transform benchmarks and pioneering initiatives into binding frameworks, ensuring consistency, accountability and scalability across sectors.
No single organization can solve this challenge alone. Sharing environmental data openly and building consistency across industries is the only way to create real accountability and accelerate change.
If transparency becomes the common language of sustainability, the discourse can shift from ambition to measurable, long term impact.