The 2026 Sustainable Construction Barometer, published by the Saint-Gobain Sustainable Construction Observatory, shows that sustainable construction is no longer limited to environmental performance. It has become a central issue for economic value creation, climate resilience, risk management and the preservation of asset value.
According to the Türkiye results, the share of stakeholders who say they fully understand the concept of sustainable construction has reached 45%, while this figure stands at 26% among citizens. Despite this awareness gap, sustainable construction is seen as a priority by 70% of stakeholders and 75% of citizens.
Banks and Insurers Move to the Center of the Transition
The barometer highlights the decisive role of financial institutions in scaling sustainable construction. Commercial banks, development banks and insurance companies are identified as key actors in climate adaptation, resilience, financing models and risk management.
The research indicates that financial actors recognize the importance of adaptation and resilience in the built environment. However, the integration of these criteria into investment, lending, capital allocation and insurance decisions remains limited.
The main reason is that the economic benefits of resilience investments are still not being demonstrated in a sufficiently concrete and measurable way.
Research Conducted with 34,800 Participants Across 30 Countries
Saint-Gobain’s barometer is based on a broad international survey conducted with 4,800 sector stakeholders and 30,000 citizens across 30 countries. Launched in 2023, the study was expanded this year with a new qualitative international research component covering commercial banks, development banks and insurance companies.
The results show that climate adaptation and resilience are gaining importance among both financial institutions and sector stakeholders. Among stakeholders, emphasis on these areas rose by 5 points compared with 2025, reaching 26%.
In Türkiye, the most common definition of sustainable construction is “construction using ecological materials.” This definition was selected by 47% of stakeholders and 41% of citizens.
The Biggest Barrier: Proving Return on Investment
The research identifies one of the key barriers to the wider adoption of sustainable construction as the difficulty of clearly demonstrating the return on adaptation and resilience investments.
While CO₂ emission reductions can be measured through widely standardized indicators, resilience investments often generate longer-term, probabilistic and indirect benefits. These include reducing future losses, protecting business continuity and sustaining asset value.
As a result, short-term costs remain highly visible, while long-term benefits are still not sufficiently integrated into finance and insurance models.
Türkiye’s results support this picture. 35% of stakeholders see raising awareness and strengthening cooperation among all stakeholders as the top priority for expanding sustainable construction. Another 33% point to the importance of regulations that increase energy renovations.
Architects and Engineers Seen as Key Actors in Türkiye
The Türkiye results also reveal which actors are most trusted in the sustainable construction transition. According to the research, 48% of stakeholders believe architects and engineers play the most important role in advancing sustainable construction. Local government representatives rank second at 38%.
This finding underlines the decisive influence of technical expertise and public authorities in the sustainable construction ecosystem.
The study also identifies three critical factors for increasing support among groups that remain more cautious toward sustainable solutions: making concrete benefits more visible, ensuring real performance for users, and demonstrating economic competitiveness with objective data.
Resilience Must Become an Economic Value
According to the Saint-Gobain Barometer, accelerating sustainable construction requires positioning resilience not only as an environmental factor, but also as a strategic value that improves economic performance, strengthens competitiveness and reduces risk.
The systematic integration of adaptation and resilience criteria into financial institutions’ decision-making processes is seen as critical for moving from shared objectives to large-scale transformation.
In this context, the development of more practical standards and reference frameworks, more accurate modeling of the financial impacts of physical climate risks, broader use of sustainability-focused financing tools and the integration of resilience criteria into project and portfolio assessment processes stand out as key priorities.
