BREEAM USA’s 2025 Review: Scaling Impact Across Key Markets

Industry-leading green building standard grew by over 90% total North American certifications since 2023, reinforcing demand for actionable, science-driven sustainability frameworks.

BREEAM, the world-leading sustainable building assessment and certification platform developed by BRE Global (‘BRE’), today released highlights from its 2025 calendar year, reflecting continued expansion across the U.S. and strong demand for credible, measurable, performance-based sustainability standards.

In 2025, the total number of BREEAM certifications in North America grew by over 90% compared to 2023, underscoring its growing role in the commercial real estate sector. California, the nation’s largest economy, accounting for roughly 14.5% of the U.S. GDP, led the expansion with more than 60 new BREEAM-certified projects. Texas, the second‑largest U.S. state economy, also emerged as the second-largest regional market by volume of assets certified in 2025.

Other fast-growing economies contributed to BREEAM’s momentum: Minnesota, Tennessee, and Indiana experienced certification growth of 700%, 450%, and 250%, respectively, while Alabama, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Utah all welcomed their first BREEAM-certified projects. BREEAM continued to build momentum in Canada, signaling increasing cross-border alignment around science-driven approaches to sustainability. Together, these trends point to accelerating demand for resilient, lower-carbon buildings across long-established economic centers and rapidly expanding North American markets alike.

“Our momentum is notable not just for its scale, but for where it’s happening and how clearly it tracks broader real estate fundamentals,” said Breana Wheeler, U.S. Director of Operations at BRE. “We’re seeing strong adoption across states that represent a meaningful share of U.S. economic output, including markets that haven’t historically been associated with sustainability leadership. It’s indicative of a broader shift in market behavior—sustainability performance is increasingly a primary lens for owners and investors as they assess long-term value, resilience, and risk.”

Certified assets in the US

Across asset classes, BREEAM certifications increased steadily, with adoption spanning diverse projects throughout the built environment. Student accommodation, multifamily, and office projects recorded annual certification growth of 250%, 56%, and 41%, respectively, as owners and operators more consistently applied performance-based frameworks across varied property types. Industrial properties continue to anchor BREEAM’s strongest asset class, driven in large part by its ability to support long-term value creation in triple-net lease portfolios, where aligning sustainability performance across owners and tenants is more complex but directly supports durability and operational efficiency.

Beyond certification growth, BREEAM continued to advance innovation, transparency, and measurable impact across the industry. Last summer, BRE joined the Embodied Carbon Harmonization and Optimization (ECHO) Project, a North American coalition aligning life cycle assessment methodologies, data reporting frameworks, and embodied carbon standards. Through this work, BRE contributes science-led expertise to support consistent, credible approaches for measuring and reducing embodied carbon—further reinforcing BREEAM’s role in supporting data-driven, whole-building performance improvements. The organization also joined a global partnership to guide best practices for sustainable building materials across leading rating systems, including BREEAM, Green Star®, LEED®, Living Building Challenge®, and WELL®. Led by mindful MATERIALS, this collaboration helps establish shared performance metrics, reduce duplication in benchmarking and reporting, and support more transparent, intentional material decisions worldwide.

These commitments are further reflected in the launch of BREEAM New Construction Version 7 (BREEAM NC V7), a globally-applied framework integrating whole-life carbon, resilience, and biodiversity metrics into performance evaluation and benchmarking. This standard update empowers developers, designers, and owners to manage environmental impact, improve efficiency, and enhance long-term portfolio resilience. Later this year, Version 7 will also roll out across BREEAM’s Refurbishment and Fit-Out and In-Use standards, further aligning new and existing assets under a unified performance framework.

With a broadened footprint, steady adoption, and growing influence across both high-value and rapidly expanding markets, BREEAM enters 2026 positioned to help owners, operators, and investors manage sustainability risks and create long term value while reinforcing its role as a trusted leader shaping a more resilient and productive built environment.

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About BRE

BRE is a world leading, multi-disciplinary, building science center with a mission to improve buildings and infrastructure, through cutting-edge research and knowledge generation. BRE maintains a range of products, services, standards and qualifications that are used around the world to bring about positive change in the built environment. Learn more at www.bregroup.com.

About BREEAM

Developed by BRE, a 100-year-old building science organization, BREEAM is the world’s first and leading science-driven suite of standards for measuring and validating sustainability performance in the built environment. Since 1990, its third-party certified standards have helped improve asset performance at every stage, from design and construction, to use and refurbishment. Millions of buildings around the world are registered to apply BREEAM’s holistic approach to sustainability for buildings and 850,000+ certificates have been issued for assets in over 100 countries. Learn more about BREEAM in the U.S. at www.breeam.com/usa.