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The climate limits of construction in over 1,000 cities

Nature Cities volume 3, pages 115–125 (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

Cities have taken the lead in setting targets to reduce household and energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, yet the challenge of reducing emissions from the growing construction sector remains largely unaddressed. Globally, cities still lack information on current construction-related emissions and the reductions needed to stay within climate limits. Here we estimate construction consumption emissions and carbon budgets for over 1,000 cities worldwide. We show that construction emissions are converging around 1–3 metric tons of CO2 equivalents (tCO2e) per capita per year—a level that could use up most or all emissions allowed by a 2 °C climate target in 2030. To stay within this target, cities must reduce their construction emissions below 10% of current levels no later than the next 2–4 decades, necessitating substantial changes and a rethinking of construction practices. Our findings, showcased through an open dashboard, can help city-level stakeholders create science-backed plans for meeting future construction demand within climate targets.

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Fig. 1: Cradle-to-gate construction consumption emissions for over 1,000 cities.
Fig. 2: Per-capita trends in construction emissions.
Fig. 3: The process and results of setting budgets for construction consumption emissions in cities.
Fig. 4: Trade-offs in the carbon budgets for construction and other sectors.
Fig. 5: Meeting a construction carbon budget given future growth in population and housing.

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Data availability

We have made all city-level emissions and budgets available in an interactive dashboard. We encourage policymakers and other stakeholders to use this tool to explore construction decarbonization scenarios. The dashboard can be found at https://tinyurl.com/citycarbonbudgets. All data and code that support the findings of this study are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15127442 (ref. 66).

Code availability

Code used to generate results from this study are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15127442 (ref. 66).

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Centre for the Sustainable Built Environment (CSBE) at University of Toronto; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Alliance International Catalyst grant number 626635407 held by A.C.S. and S.S.; the Canada Research Chairs Program (CRC-2020-00082 held by I.D.P. and CRC-2020-232970 held by S.S.); and the NSERC Vanier award held by K.H.R. The CSBE is funded by an NSERC Alliance Grant (ALLRP 582941 − 23), the Climate Positive Energy Initiative and the School of Cities both at the University of Toronto and 12 industry partners (Colliers; the Cement Association of Canada; Chandos Construction; Mattamy Homes; Northcrest; Pomerleau; Purpose Building, Inc.; ZGF Architects; Arup; SvN Architects + Planners; Entuitive; and KPMB Architects). We thank L. Cullen for his dashboard advice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Keagan Hudson Rankin, I. Daniel Posen & Shoshanna Saxe

  2. Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Keagan Hudson Rankin & André Cabrera Serrenho

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Chris Bachmann

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  1. Keagan Hudson Rankin
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Contributions

K.H.R.: conceptualization, methodology, data, software, validation, visualization, writing (original draft, review and editing) and funding acquisition. A.C.S.: conceptualization, supervision, validation, writing (review and editing) and funding acquisition. C.B.: methodology, validation and writing (review and editing). I.D.P.: conceptualization, supervision, methodology, validation, writing (review and editing) and funding acquisition. S.S.: conceptualization, supervision, methodology, validation, writing (original draft, review and editing) and funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Keagan Hudson Rankin.

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Nature Cities thanks Ying Yu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Rankin, K.H., Cabrera Serrenho, A., Bachmann, C. et al. The climate limits of construction in over 1,000 cities. Nat Cities 3, 115–125 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00379-8

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