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Sustainable Buildings for the Future Chair

Sustainable Buildings for the Future (SBF) Chair, towards sustainable and responsible construction

Led by SOCOTEC, the Sustainable Buildings for the Future Chair builds on ESTP’s long-standing expertise in integrated risk management.

Its ambition is to place environmental, technical, financial and extra-financial performance assessments at the core of strategic decision-making in the construction and real estate sectors.

Missions and Ambitions

Research chairs at ESTP, developed in partnership with companies and research organisations, play a key role in strengthening the link between research and education. They focus efforts on specific themes through dedicated teaching and research programmes supported by dedicated governance.

Integrated risk management is a historic area of expertise at ESTP, with pioneering programmes launched over 20 years ago. Today, the objective is to go further by fully integrating extra-financial, technical and financial performance assessments into strategic decision-making.

3 Strategic Pillars

Driving the Sustainable Transition of the Real Estate Sector

The Chair addresses the major environmental challenges of a sector responsible for 40% of global carbon emissions.

It develops tools to:

  • Identify climate, energy and regulatory risks

  • Anticipate asset obsolescence risks

  • Integrate sustainability into investment decisions

Integrating Financial and Extra-Financial Performance

In a context marked by the multiplication of ESG frameworks and regulatory requirements (European taxonomy, extra-financial reporting), the Chair develops:

  • A decision-making model to assess the sustainability of buildings

  • An integrated risk management approach

  • Harmonised reporting and evaluation methods

Objective: Make sustainability strategies comparable, reliable and operational.

Connecting Research, Education and Innovation

Like all ESTP research chairs, it strengthens the link between research and teaching by:

  • Integrating scientific findings into initial and executive education programmes

  • Developing tailored pedagogical engineering

  • Supporting stakeholders in acquiring key skills related to ecological, energy and digital transitions

Challenges and Objectives

The sector’s impacts are significant:

  • 40% of global carbon emissions generated by buildings

  • 70% of waste in France produced by the construction sector

  • 54% of homes exposed to shrink–swell clay risk

  • 76% of natural habitats in an unfavourable conservation state

Environmental impact has become a decisive criterion for investors, who now integrate sustainability through:

  • Double materiality

  • Extra-financial reporting

  • Alignment with the European taxonomy

However, the diversity of ESG frameworks makes decision-making complex and difficult to compare.

 

The Chair’s Objectives

  • Identify the needs of construction stakeholders to steer energy and ecological transitions

  • Define the sustainability conditions of construction and operational activities in line with the six environmental objectives of the EU Taxonomy Regulation

  • Develop a decision-making model integrating sustainability, financial and extra-financial performance

  • Define an integrated risk management approach that considers regulatory, technical, social and environmental requirements

  • Integrate research outcomes into ESTP’s initial and continuing education programmes

Stakeholder Engagement

  • Real estate companies, investors, asset managers, landlords, local authorities:
    Needs assessment, case-based research, testing of transition assessment models and tools.
  • Experts, engineering consultancies, specifiers:
    Sharing best practices and providing technical expertise on models and tools.
  • Associations and research centres:
    Research partnerships, joint studies and awareness-raising initiatives.

Scientific Areas of Focus

  • Complexity of energy and ecological transitions: Defining and modelling transitions in construction while integrating multi-scale and multi-stakeholder dimensions.

  • Post-transition building sustainability: Developing criteria or “ecological budgets” to assess sustainability in a post-transition context.

  • Natural resource management: Anticipating risks related to resource availability for sustainable construction.

  • Interconnection of extra-financial reporting methods: Harmonising reporting methods and building performance assessments.

Contact

Francis CLAUDE
Chairholder, Sustainable Buildings for the Future
Associate Professor in Ecological Civil Engineering at ESTP
Email: fclaude@estp.fr

 

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