Governments and international institutions must stop "dithering" and help facilitate a global standard for measuring the sustainability of buildings, property industry leaders will urge this week.
At a conference session chaired by British Property Federation chief executive Liz Peace, MIPIM delegates will hear that initiatives launched by the European Union - such as Energy Performance Certificates - and the United Nations, have so far missed opportunities to help industry measure its efforts to help create a sustainable built environment.
This is important, the Wednesday conference will hear, as industry will only be able to meet the climate change challenge if it is able to meaningfully measure - and so compare and manage - the efficiency of buildings.
The use of standard metrics could also help strengthen the link between sustainability and value.
Liz Peace said: "Industry is crying out for a truly universal, international approach to measuring and assessing sustainable buildings.
"We would urge governments and international institutions to stop dithering, stop deluging us with useless and duplicatory initiatives, and agree on an effective and easy to use approach.
"The property industry is doing a great deal to put its house in order, but the lack of any universal or even widely accepted set of measures, such as the rules that exist to govern international accounting standards, means some of this effort may be wasted."
The conference session will hear from a trio of leading developers; David Partridge, joint chief executive of Argent Group, Guillaume Poitrinal, CEO of Unibail-Rodamco and chairman of EPRA, and Ché Wall, sustainability director of Lend Lease.
Wall said he believed that industry itself should be at the forefront of creating a global measure of sustainability.
He added: "This is too important an area to be left to the policy makers.
"Otherwise instead of real progress we will go on seeing 'sustainability bling' - policies that may look green but represent a terrible misdirection of capital in terms of the carbon that is abated."
David Partridge will highlight the work done at Argent's flagship King's Cross development, which will include renewable features such as a district wide heating system driven by Combined Heat and Power.
He said: "Governments should set developers free to innovate, rather than trying to proscribe what the solutions should be.
"The simplest way would be to establish a single economic price for carbon in use, and to let the market respond - there is no one better placed to do so."
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