The three priority areas for successfully achieving decarbonization and preparing for the ZAN 2026 obligations.
In the face of the climate emergency and the scarcity of resources, France is accelerating its land transition. Local authorities, real estate asset managers, and developers must now combine two regulatory imperatives: drastically reduce land artificialization and decarbonize their built heritage. These obligations, framed by the Climate and Resilience Law and reinforced by the 2026-2028 deadlines, require a profound transformation of land use and environmental management strategies. To succeed in this transition, three priority areas are essential.
Regulatory context: heading towards 2026 and beyond
Since the enactment of the Climate and Resilience Law in August 2021, the path is clear: to achieve Net Zero Artificialization (ZNA) by 2050, passing through a crucial milestone by 2031: reduce the consumption of natural, agricultural and forest spaces (NAF) by 50% compared to the period 2011-2021.
To achieve this, a tight schedule is imposed on local actors:
November 22, 2024: integration of ZNA objectives into regional SRADDET
February 22, 2027: bringing SCoT into compliance with the new land consumption ceilings
February 22, 2028: mandatory integration into PLU and municipal maps
In the event of non-compliance with these deadlines, the consequences are immediate: suspension of openings to urbanization and inability to carry out new extension projects.
At the same time, regulatory obligations regarding decarbonization are becoming stricter. The CSRD directive (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), which comes into force in 2024, requires large companies and, progressively, listed SMEs (from 2026) to provide detailed environmental reporting including the trajectory for reducing greenhouse gas emissions across their entire value chain. Local authorities, for their part, must align with the National Low-Carbon Strategy (SNBC), which imposes a reduction of 33% of GHG emissions by 2030 and 81% by 2050, with investments needing to more than double by 2030.
Land Diagnostic and Sobriety: Steering the Optimization of Assets
The first task consists of establishing a precise and actionable assessment of current land consumption and the available sobriety levers. In 2023, France consumed 19,263 hectares of ENAF, the lowest level since 2009, confirming a decrease of 37% over fourteen years. However, this consumption has remained stable at around 20,000 hectares annually since 2019, equivalent to the area of Marseille each year. Source
64% of this consumption is intended for housing, 23% for economic activities, and nearly 61% is concentrated in the so-called
Regulatory Compliance and Automated Reporting: ThinkCities® as a Strategic Lever
The third challenge is to anticipate and secure compliance with the obligations of 2026-2028, by implementing reliable and automated environmental reporting systems. The new rules require a systematic neutralization of artificialization: any new development operation must be compensated by an equivalent renaturation. In the absence of compliance with urban planning documents (SCoT, PLU) within the deadlines, openings for urbanization are automatically suspended.
To avoid these blockages and turn the constraint into an opportunity, local authorities and asset managers must equip themselves with robust digital tools. ThinkCities®, an environmental management and territorial vulnerability platform, precisely addresses these challenges by enabling:
Centralize environmental data (land, energy, water, climate risks, biodiversity, soil artificialization, ZAN) within an integrated and secure digital platform
Automate the production of compliance reports (ZAN, CSRD, PCAET, Green Fund) through real-time data-driven ecological dashboards, thereby eliminating time-consuming manual tasks and reducing errors
Visualize transition trajectories through clear and shared indicators (land consumption, carbon emissions, energy performance, climate vulnerabilities, ecological fragmentation)
Simulate prospective scenarios to anticipate the impacts of land use choices (densification, renaturation, solar potential) and justify decisions to funders and citizens
ThinkCities® functions like an environmental digital twin, transforming complex data into 2D/3D map visualizations understandable by all decision-makers, even without technical expertise. This approach allows for:
Cross-reference heterogeneous data (mobility, energy, climate risks, biodiversity, land) in a coherent overview
Automatically generate tracking dashboards for the PCAET, CSRD reports, Green Fund files, and ZAN diagnostics
Quickly identify priority intervention areas (over-consuming energy sectors, spaces to be renaturalized, densification potentials)
Justify every land use decision with data, demonstrating compliance with regulatory trajectories and strategic relevance
Thanks to ThinkCities®, local authorities are no longer just confronted with the 2026-2028 obligations: they anticipate them, document them automatically, and turn them into a competitive advantage with funders and citizens.
Conclusion: Anticipate to Gain Efficiency
The deadlines of 2026-2028 mark a decisive turning point for land transition and the decarbonization of territories. The actors who anticipate these obligations by relying on the digitalization of environmental data, the management of consumption, and ecological dashboards give themselves a sustainable competitive advantage.
By structuring their land, energy, and climate data now, local authorities and asset managers can not only meet regulatory constraints but also optimize their investments, reduce their operational costs, and secure their funding applications (Green Fund, ADEME, France 2030).
The ecological transition is no longer managed by instinct: it is measured, simulated, and optimized through intelligent digital solutions. Those who will turn regulatory constraints into strategic opportunities will be the pioneers of the sustainable city of tomorrow.
