Local Action Helps Mainstream Net-Zero, Climate-Resilient Buildings in Mexico and India

Through the All in for a Net Zero Built Environment initiative, WRI Mexico, WRI India and partners worked closely with local governments, developers and community stakeholders to advance net-zero carbon and resilient buildings (NZCRBs) in four cities. These local interventions are proving essential to mainstreaming NZCRBs, building capacity, and launching demonstration projects in additional cities and at the national level.

Advancing Local Action with Global Impact

Buildings are responsible for 36% of energy use and nearly 40% of energy-related CO2 emissions globally. Without rapid decarbonization, the sector’s emissions could double by 2050 due to urbanization, population growth and increased demand for cooling as the planet warms. In this context, net-zero carbon and resilient buildings offer a major opportunity to align climate goals with economic and social benefits. Alongside cutting emissions, they can reduce energy bills, improve indoor air quality, lower urban temperatures and enhance disaster resilience.

Since 2023, the All in for a Net Zero Built Environment initiative has worked with cities in India and Mexico to accelerate NZCRB implementation through the development of national whole life carbon roadmaps and City Action Plans. These roadmaps and action plans not only chart technical solutions in the buildings sector, but also identify the policy, finance, governance shifts and partnerships needed to make these solutions mainstream. Participating cities and countries gain access to tailored technical assistance, peer-to-peer learning and global advocacy platforms to raise ambition and unlock investment in NZCRBs. The initiative also works to link local pilot projects with national strategies and global best practices. This helps ensure that innovations can be scaled, adapted and replicated — bridging the gap between isolated success stories and market transformation.

The program puts a strong focus on how NZCRBs can unlock co-benefits and spur economic growth. Mexico, for example, has positioned energy-efficient construction as a competitive asset that can reduce operating costs, attract green investment and create new jobs. Additional benefits highlighted in India include improving public health through better air quality, reducing energy poverty and mitigating extreme heat in cities.

Through the All in for a Net Zero Built Environment initiative, both Mexico and India are seeing local action spur national momentum toward a net-zero built environment.

Mexico: A National Roadmap Takes Shape

In Mexico, WRI and Sustentabilidad para Mexico (SUMe) supported the cities of Monterrey and Hermosillo in developing City Action Plans, building on their near-term climate plans and decarbonization commitments. The cities identified transformative actions for the buildings sector from a whole lifecycle of carbon perspective and mapped them according to their urgency and priority.

These local efforts have helped catalyze a broader debate on how to embed net-zero targets into national housing subsidies, public works tenders and building codes. They have also fed into a series of working groups led by WRI México, SUMe and local stakeholders to design Mexico’s National Roadmap to decarbonize the built environment through the full building lifecycle. A national workshop in July 2025 convened more than 100 leaders from the construction sector, government, academia and civil society. This milestone event marked the culmination of a year-long process of technical studies, stakeholder consultations and scenario analysis designed to chart a credible pathway for decarbonizing Mexico’s buildings sector by mid-century.

The new roadmap sets out clear actions for the federal administration, including the adoption of mandatory energy codes, incentives for retrofits and low-carbon materials, and public procurement policies that prioritize NZCRBs. By linking climate ambition with economic opportunity, the plan positions Mexico to reduce building energy use by up to 35%, cut operating costs for households and businesses, stimulate demand for national green industries and create thousands of skilled jobs.

Participants stressed that without coordinated implementation across ministries and levels of government, the roadmap’s targets will remain aspirational, making cross-sector collaboration essential to turn vision into action. Ministries responsible for energy, housing and industry have already expressed interest in aligning their sectoral strategies with the roadmap’s milestones.

India: Cities Lead the Way on NZCRBs

WRI India and the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) worked with two fast-growing cities, Nashik and Thiruvananthapuram, to turn national climate targets into actionable local plans for NZCRBs.

In Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, WRI collaborated with municipal officials, state agencies, architects and community groups to co-develop and launch a City-level NZCRB Action Plan. The plan identifies 20 priority actions spanning the entire building lifecycle, including developing carbon databases for materials, introducing green procurement guidelines, integrating NZCRB principles into urban zoning and building permits, and adopting demolition waste recovery systems. Thiruvananthapuram’s commitment builds on its existing 17 MW of municipal rooftop solar capacity and seeks to extend energy efficiency gains to both new and existing buildings. The plan also incorporates climate resilience measures to counteract rising urban heat and monsoon flooding risks.

Nashik, a historic city in Maharashtra, is seeing unprecedented infrastructure investments driven by the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, making this a critical moment for the city to consider its carbon footprint in the buildings and construction sector. Nashik has already established its Climate Action Plan, yet this does not address embodied carbon emissions. In the newly developed action plan for building sector decarbonization, WRI India and Nashik’s local government set transformative actions that address both operational and embodied carbon, such as mainstreaming the use of renewable energy, adopting energy efficiency measurement in all building types, establishing a database of low and zero-carbon materials that are locally produced, and collaborating with academic institutions to provide skill development programs related to building decarbonization.

With India’s urban population projected to reach 600 million by 2036, these interventions aim to help curb rising building emissions, which already make up 32% of the country’s total. At the same time, they can enhance liveability and equity for a rapidly urbanizing population. The two cities’ experiences will inform similar roadmaps in other urban areas, creating a blueprint for integrating climate, development and housing priorities.

From Roadmap to Rollout

The next phase in both countries focuses on implementation and scale.

In Mexico, stakeholders are working to establish a national steering committee that will oversee roadmap execution, track progress and coordinate policy across ministries. Pilot projects will be launched in public buildings to demonstrate cost-effective pathways to NZCRBs, with the goal of attracting blended finance and private sector participation.

In India, Thiruvananthapuram will move from planning to pilot implementation, starting with municipal facilities and affordable housing projects that integrate solar PV, passive cooling and efficient materials.

Both initiatives will require sustained capacity building for local governments, training programs for construction trades and stronger data systems to monitor building performance. WRI and partners will continue to facilitate knowledge exchange between cities and countries, ensuring lessons from early adopters inform global standards and funding priorities. Key areas for future collaboration include:

1. Recommend and, where appropriate, found, steering committees to monitor, coordinate and enforce NZCRB standards in Mexico and India.
2. Develop pathways to launch pilot projects under the City Action Plans and roadmaps to demonstrate scalable NZCRB delivery across public and private assets and infrastructure.
3. Share a compendium of international best practices to mobilize private sector finance through incentives, blended finance and business model pilots, and learn from experts in the field.
4. Evaluate and iterate, using monitoring frameworks embedded in city plans and national strategies to refine policy and expand impact.

The All in for a Net Zero Built Environment initiative reflects a pivotal inflection point: from defining net-zero carbon and resilient buildings to building actionable roadmaps grounded in local realities and ready to be implemented at scale. Globally, the initiative has expanded its network to include a consortium of local and global partners (such as the World Green Building Council, local green building councils and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development) and participating jurisdictions. This provides a platform for cities, countries and industry representatives to share lessons on financing retrofits, scaling renewable integration and overcoming institutional barriers.

Early impacts demonstrate that roadmaps are not just documents — when co-created with stakeholders and tied to concrete investment and policy measures, they can become powerful accelerators of market change.