[ESREI’s European Tour] What’s to come for sustainable real estate in France? – With Alliance HQE’s and OID’s CEOs

How do you picture the sustainability landscape for real estate in your country? What aspects of ESG dynamics are currently the most integrated? Conversely, which aspects remain the least integrated? According to OID and Alliance HQE-GBC France:

Over the past two decades, France has played a leadership role in implementing ambitious regulations towards a more sustainable industry. While regulations for new development are widely addressing ESG issues, regulations targeting the building stock are mainly focused on energy efficiency.

This regulatory landscape has been complemented by the wide adoption of voluntary certifications and labels with French specific schemes such as HQE, Effinergie, BBCA (low carbon association) and BiodiverCity, adopted on a much larger scale than in most other European countries. These schemes now cover the entire building lifecycle, from design and construction to operation, renovation and district development.

Sustainable finance has also progressed significantly, with labels such as Label SRI helping investors identifying ESG-oriented investment funds. According to OID’s analysis on the SRI labeling for retail real estate funds, published in November 2025, 55% of retail real estate funds had obtained the SRI label in 2024.  

On the social and governance dimensions, France also benefits from a strong institutional framework. Dedicated regulations, corporate governance rules and financial market supervision provide a robust foundation, while many companies in the sector voluntarily go beyond regulatory requirements through corporate social responsibility initiatives.

As a result, the French real estate sector is among the most advanced in Europe in addressing ESG issues and brings together a wide range of stakeholders, including public authorities, developers, investors, financiers, asset managers, occupiers and operators, whose sustainability objectives are increasingly aligned, despite sometimes divergent interests.

However, energy efficiency and low-carbon requirements are progressively becoming a market standard, and a shift is emerging towards more systemic approaches. Increasing attention is given to topics such as adaptation to climate change, water management, biodiversity or circular economy, which are increasingly identified as material risks by the industry. If for now they remain less mature and less integrated than energy and carbon, promising initiatives are emerging, and referential, methodologies and tools are becoming available.

Similarly, building adaptability, reversibility and resilience are increasingly recognized as essential to ensuring long-term asset value and climate resilience, although they remain challenging to implement in practice.

Overall, the French market is moving from a period focused on compliance and performance towards a more integrated approach to sustainability that seeks to reconcile carbon reduction, climate adaptation, biodiversity, resource preservation, resilience and quality of life across the entire built environment. However, regulatory stability will be crucial to maintain industry efforts and ensure proper integration in investment decisions and asset planning..

What are the key regulatory deadlines or developments in 2026-2027 to monitor in France? According to OID and Alliance HQE-GBC France:

France continues to operate within a dense and evolving regulatory framework that is shaping the transition of the real estate sector. While the overall direction remains clear: accelerating decarbonisation, improving energy performance and increasing transparency, the accumulation of European and national regulations raises growing concerns about consistency, coherence, readability and implementation.

Several regulatory developments are therefore being closely monitored by market participants:

• RE2020 is expected to tighten, with successive thresholds in 2025, 2028 and 2031. By 2031, it aims to reduce the whole-life carbon footprint of new builds by 42% compared with 2022 levels, while promoting the use of bio-based materials, on-site renewable energy production and enhanced summer comfort management. The continued rollout of RE2020 will also include its extension to additional building categories (educational, healthcare, hospitality and commercial buildings). Therefore, the challenge will be to ensure consistent application across these technically complex asset classes. These upcoming adjustments, expected following the Rivaton report, must be monitored. First, they will mainly concern outdoor spaces, ceiling heights, district heating networks, high-rise buildings, and building extensions (including vertical) and were scheduled to enter into force in July 2026.

• As for all Member States, the requested implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) will require careful transposition into French legislation, as well as integration of new requirements by market participants. This change adds to an already complex regulatory landscape, including the Tertiary Eco-Energy Scheme (Décret Tertiaire) pending the publication of the 2040 thresholds for energy consumption reduction, the DDADUE laws (to adapt the EU law) and the APER Act (on renewables), which are also being closely monitored. In this regard, maintaining consistency across overlapping regulations must be a priority.

• Alongside the timetable for renting restrictions associated with French EPCs (DPE – Diagnostic de Performance Energétique), different regulatory and technical adjustments have refined the assessment method, including revised thresholds for dwellings under 40 m² and stronger anti-fraud controls. The latest calculation update entered into force on January 1^st 2026, reducing the primary-energy conversion factor for electricity from 2.3 to 1.9, fictively “improving” the rating of electrically heated housing.

• Another important milestone will be the full deployment of the Building Automation and Control Systems (BACS) Decree, which will strengthen operational energy management in non-residential buildings and support the achievement of decarbonisation objectives.

• CSRD and the forthcoming VSME standard for SMEs illustrate the challenges of regulatory implementation and the question of how sustainability performance is measured, reported and financed. Many stakeholders consider that a more gradual, phased approach would have facilitated market adoption, rather than setting highly ambitious requirements that are subsequently revised and can create confusion or even frustration for actors that were well advanced in the preparation process.

• As for other European countries, the EU Taxonomy also remains under close scrutiny in France. Although designed to provide greater clarity, particularly for financial markets, its practical application continues to raise questions, and further revisions are expected by the end of 2026.

• On biodiversity issues, France’s Net Zero Land Take (ZAN – Zero Artificialisation Nette) framework still aims to halve the consumption of natural, agricultural and forest land between 2021 and 2031, before achieving net-zero land artificialisation by 2050. However, its implementation remains to be monitored, as different regulatory changes are under study. For example, the global target could be replaced by locally differentiated trajectories and some projects being evicted from local land budgets. The revisions in the law remain under consideration by the National Assembly, meaning these changes have not yet entered into force.

Against this backdrop on ESG standards that is seen all across Europe, the 2026–2027 period will mark a transition from regulatory design to operational delivery. It will be less about adopting new regulations than about demonstrating that existing frameworks can deliver measurable environmental, economic and operational outcomes. The focus will increasingly shift towards the enforcement and assessment of existing frameworks. This implementation phase should provide the first real test of the coherence, effectiveness and market readiness of France’s sustainable real estate policies. 

In 2026-2027, what are the key voluntary initiatives that you are involved in, in relation to sustainable real estate in your country?

In the 2026–2027 period, several key voluntary developments are being closely monitored in France in relation to sustainable real estate, particularly as the sector moves from regulatory frameworks toward broader collective experimentation and market transformation.

For Alliance HQE-GBC:

For the coming year, the Alliance HQE-GBC will follow or take part in different voluntary initiatives, to help the integration of emerging issues across the sector.

We will actively engage with the next phase of the CAP2030 initiative along with Effinergie and the Collectif des démarches quartiers bâtiments durables. This initiative, supported by the French government, the ADEME (French Environment Agency) and the CSTB on technical and scientific aspects, represents a major voluntary and collaborative framework for the sector to go beyond the RE2020 regulation, by exploring new topics such as circular economy, biodiversity, water management, indoor environment quality, adaptation to climate change. The work started in 2023 and include the launch of a large-scale collective experimentation based on voluntary pilot projects, structured around the themes and indicators defined in the Common Reference Framework. These experiments aim to test, in real-life conditions, more ambitious sustainability pathways beyond current regulatory requirements.

Finally, the development of the CAP2030 Observatory will be a key milestone. It is designed to collect, structure, and analyse data from the voluntary new development projects participating in the CAP2030 initiative in order to monitor progress, identify best practices, and support continuous improvement across the sector. This observatory will play an essential role in building a shared evidence base to inform industry development practices.

Overall, these voluntary initiatives reflect a clear shift toward a more collaborative, evidence-based, and experimental approach to sustainable real estate transformation.

For OID:

Since its creation, the OID provides the real estate industry with an annual Energy & Environmental Performance Barometer, that gathers data shared by voluntary companies (contribution is opened to non-members) on their assets’ environmental performance. First focused on France, the benchmark has progressively expanded to other EU countries (Germany, Spain, Italy…). It analyses the evolution of key indicators on energy consumption, GHG emissions, water consumption and waste generation. These results are presented by types of buildings and activities. With 53 participating companies for the 2025 edition, data on 32 700 buildings were collected, representing 123 millions m². This benchmark is used by the whole industry to assess their building performance and serves as a reference for regulatory requirements such as the EU Taxonomy (top 15% – top 30%). The 2026 edition will be released in November (contributions remain open until the end of July). In addition, the OID is working with a group of its members on the creation of a data portal gathering all the data collected since 2012, that would allow companies to access these KPIs in a more dynamic way.

On the other hand, in October 2025, the OID launched in partnership with the Plan Bâtiment Durable (led by the French ministry for the environmental transition) a Charter of Commitment to Climate Change Adaptation, gathering 19 French real estate leading companies as first signatories. This voluntary and ambitious initiative is initially targeting asset owners and developers, with a clear objective: creating a community who will work together to organise a collective and concrete response to adaptation challenges. It is intended to be progressively extended to other stakeholders in the industry.

The charter sets out a voluntary yet ambitious framework, based on three complementary levels of commitment: 1. taking action across their assets and portfolios by carrying out climate risk assessments, setting operational targets and implementing concrete and effective adaptation measures. 2. mobilising their organisations internally, in particular through staff training and by setting an example at their own sites and workplaces. 3. driving progress across the entire industry by encouraging the sharing of lessons learnt, enhancing the skills of service providers and jointly developing the standards of the future.

More recently, the OID published a comprehensive work on voluntary reporting standards, prepared with eight OID members. While many companies are no longer subject to CSRD requirements, they still face reporting expectations from their stakeholders or consider it is relevant to share their ESG commitments and progress. The aim of this publication is to provide them with clear and practical guidance to implement voluntary ESG reporting, through operational tools, methodological guidelines and practical feedback. Two complementary deliverables are available : 1.  a methodological guide covering the regulatory context, explaining the double materiality analysis and reviewing the various frameworks, supported by a range of operational guidelines and suggestions. 2. a cross-reference table between the various ESG frameworks’ KPIs : CSRD, VSME, Mid-Caps, SRI Label, the European Taxonomy and specific criteria and indicators produced by the OID. The work will continue in order to produce factsheets focused on specific ESG topics, starting with energy efficiency. 

Could you outline the main elements of your events and publications calendar for 2026-2027?

Alliance HQE-GBC’s main events and work:

Beyond the implementation of new regulations, Alliance HQE-GBC is focusing in particular on several emerging priorities:

• Enhancing the resilience and climate adaptation of both existing and new buildings;
• Promoting circular economy principles and accelerating the renovation of the existing building stock;
  
• Protecting and enhancing biodiversity.

These issues are gaining increasing importance across the sector. Their successful integration will largely depend on stakeholder engagement, as regulatory frameworks alone are unlikely to drive the necessary transformation, while the supporting value chains and market practices are still in the process of maturing. We will take part in several major events such as SIBCA in September 2026 and the Paris Builders Show from 28^th September to 1^st October.

We will also keep on participating in the European-funded Drastic project, including organisations from 8 countries. It aims to test concrete solutions to transform construction practices, with a strong focus on circularity and reuse. In France, the demonstrator led by Saint-Gobain focuses on interior fit-out materials in office buildings, such as ceiling tiles and partitions, which are often removed and discarded during refurbishment cycles despite their reuse potential. The project tests the full operational chain in real renovation conditions, from selective deconstruction and quality control to logistics, traceability, and reinstallation. It highlights key barriers on technical, logistical, contractual, and organizational aspects, while addressing the specific challenge of short renovation cycles in the office sector as a lever for scaling circular construction practices.

We are also planning to release, in June 2027, version 5 of the HQE Sustainable Building certification, issued by Certivea. The main principles of the certification will remain, but evolutions in the indicators and the thresholds are to be expected. Key developments in this new version will focus on:

• Circular economy
• Climate change adaptation
• Summer comfort under increasingly degraded climate conditions
• The use and valorisation of non-potable water resources (EICH – water not intended for
  human consumption)
• Building evolvability and adaptability

OID’s main events and work:

In addition to our webinars, conferences and training sessions, the OID is taking part in different major events in 2026-2027.

OID was invited to Vivatech 2026 to share insights on R4RE – Resilience for Real Estate, our climate
risk and biodiversity impact assessment and monitoring platform who received the GreenTech innovation label. We are also an institutional partner of SIBCA’s 2026 edition (French Low Carbon Fair for the building sector), where we will co-animate the Climate Resilience Pavillon in September 2026.

Such events aim at increasing the industry understanding of the need to adopt a systemic approach. By sharing our work on Adaptation, Physical Risks and Biodiversity, we seek to improve real estate players’ understanding of sustainability risks and opportunities, and provide them with the necessary tools to deploy consistent solutions on their portfolios.

In November, we will celebrate the 5^th year anniversary of our Biodiversity applied research programme (Biodiversity Impulsion Group – BIG). Launched in 2021, this programme brings together
project owners, users, public and private contractors, and biodiversity experts, with the aim of developing knowledge, common frameworks, tools and feedback to accelerate the integration of biodiversity issues into the design and management of real estate projects in France. BIG’s DNA is to
provide a space for exchange on biodiversity issues between companies, experts and scientists, leading to the publication of various research papers and operational guides over the last 5 years, and the creation of a biodiversity analysis tool available online, BIODI-Bat.

Finally, the end of the year will be the stage of OID’s main conference on our Barometers, organized on 30^th November. In addition to the annual release of the Energy & Environmental Performance Barometer for France and several EU countries, this conference will introduce for the first time our new Biodiversity Barometer. The Biodiversity Barometer offers a clear and structured overview and lays the foundations for a shared tool to better understand how the property sector is addressing biodiversity-related issues.

Finally, in your opinion, what are the key trends likely to shape the real estate sector in the coming years?

Alliance HQE-GBC’s opinion:

The built environment sits at the crossroads of several major transitions, including energy, decarbonisation, biodiversity and digitalisation, all of which are reshaping the way we live, work and use buildings. These transformations are already reshaping the real estate sector.

At the same time, climate change is creating new constraints that buildings and their occupants will increasingly have to withstand, from heatwaves and droughts to more frequent extreme weather events. In parallel, land scarcity and the objective of achieving net zero land artificialisation are driving a profound transformation of urban development. Future cities will need to become denser while also being greener, integrating nature-based solutions, reducing urban heat islands, restoring soil permeability and enhancing quality of life for residents.

The circular economy and material reuse are also emerging as key drivers, progressively redefining the way buildings are designed, constructed, renovated and eventually dismantled, with a stronger focus on resource efficiency and whole-life value.

As the existing building stock represents the greatest opportunity for reducing environmental impacts, performance improvements must now combine energy efficiency, decarbonisation, climate adaptation, resilience and occupant well-being, with renovation and asset operation are becoming central to value creation.

Finally, adaptability and reversibility are becoming essential design principles. Buildings are becoming increasingly multifunctional, moving away from single-use assets towards flexible spaces capable of accommodating different activities over their lifetime. The capacity to transform buildings over time—whether by converting offices into housing or adapting assets to changing social and economic needs—will be critical to ensuring the long-term resilience of the built environment.

View from the OID:

In the future, ESG integration in French real estate will be defined less by the creation of new frameworks than by the sector’s ability to translate existing commitments into investment, asset management and operational decisions. As regulatory requirements continue to evolve, market participants will need to move beyond formal compliance and demonstrate that sustainability strategies deliver tangible results to ensure investments in the long term. Greater consistency between reporting, financing and property strategies will therefore be essential, particularly where changing deadlines and methodologies reduce visibility and delay investment decisions.

At the same time, the scope of ESG analysis is broadening. Energy and carbon, even though fundamental, will no longer be sufficient to assess an asset’s long-term resilience. Physical climate risks, biodiversity loss, water pressures and resource dependency are likely to play a growing role in valuation, due diligence and capital allocation. Progress will depend not only on reliable data and practical tools, but also on companies’ ability to develop new expertise and embed these issues in their organisations.

More frequent heatwaves, droughts and extreme weather events will require buildings and cities to become more resilient, while constraints on land artificialisation will encourage denser, greener development, soil restoration and nature-based solutions. Properly addressing these risks will require further cooperation from the whole value chain, as well as public and institutional players, to operate at the right scale.

Finally, increased resource scarcity will impose sufficiency as a new parameter and will progressively reshape practices, with adaptability, reversibility and multifunctionality likely to become central to long-term value creation. Buildings will increasingly need to accommodate changing uses, economic conditions and social needs whilst always taking the environmental context into account. Overall, the sector is moving from a compliance-led approach towards evidence-based decision-making, collective experimentation and integrated sustainability strategies that preserve both environmental performance and long-term asset relevance.

European Sustainable Real Estate Initiative (ESREI) is leading a tour of European countries, in order to map the main publications, regulations, and voluntary initiatives regarding sustainable real estate for the years to come. This article completes a series of interview done in Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Germany and the United Kingdom.

ESREI is now sponsored by Advenis REIM, BNP Paribas Real Estate, JLL, La Caisse, La Francaise, OFI Invest, Pimco Prime Real Estate, Praemia REIM, Sevaia, Socotec, SwissLife AM and Tikehau Capital.