Governments and international institutions are accused of "dithering" on the issue.
A meeting at the MIPIM property conference in Cannes today, to be chaired by British Property Federation chief executive Liz Peace, will be told that initiatives launched by the European Union - such as Energy Performance Certificates - and the United Nations, have missed opportunities to help industry measure its efforts to help create a sustainable built environment.
Property developers and owners say they can only meet the climate change challenge if they can 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, they say.
Ms 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 developers including David Partridge, joint chief executive of Argent Group, and Ché Wall, sustainability director of Lend Lease.
Mr Wall said he believed that industry itself should develop a global measure of sustainability. He said: "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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