Our industry is engaged in an important dialogue to improve the efficiency and resilience of real assets through transparency and industry collaboration. This article is a contribution to this larger conversation and does not necessarily reflect GRESB’s position.
Real estate and infrastructure investors are under increasing pressure to prove their sustainability strategies are producing measurable outcomes at asset and portfolio level.
Energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, climate resilience, biodiversity, stakeholder engagement, and social value are no longer standalone considerations. Together, they influence operating costs, asset resilience, access to capital, and long-term value.
For GRESB participants, the challenge is therefore moving beyond policies and commitments, towards strategies that shape investment decisions and improve real-world performance.
Regenerative strategy provides a useful framework for this transition. Rather than focusing only on reducing negative impacts, it asks how real assets can strengthen the environmental and social systems on which their long-term performance depends.
What is regenerative strategy?
Regenerative strategy takes sustainability a step further. It goes beyond mitigating the impacts of climate change and places emphasis on creating value for communities, ecosystems, and shareholders. It involves taking a long-term perspective (of 10-30 years) and fully integrating sustainable approaches into an organization’s ways of working.
In a real assets context, regenerative strategy means designing investment, development, and operational decisions to restore or strengthen environmental and social systems, while supporting resilient financial performance.
This might include:
- restoring habitats and improving ecological connectivity across an estate;
- using nature-based solutions to manage heat, flooding, or water stress;
- improving buildings in ways that support occupant health and reduce operating costs;
- working with communities to create lasting local economic and social value;
- applying circular economy principles to construction, refurbishment, and asset management; and/or
- embedding long-term climate and nature considerations within acquisition, development, and capital expenditure decisions.
The strongest approach is therefore not to create a standalone “regeneration program,” but to embed regenerative principles into existing investment, development, and asset management processes.
Why is now the right time for regeneration?
Firstly, risk management is evolving. According to the World Economic Forum, seven of the top ten global risks expected to emerge over the next decade are environmental or social in nature. These risks directly affect operations, supply chains, reputation, and access to capital.
For real asset owners, environmental and social pressures can translate into:
- physical damage
- business interruption
- increased insurance and operating costs
- planning constraints
- weaker occupier demand
- accelerated obsolescence
A regenerative approach can help organizations consider these issues together, rather than managing carbon, climate adaptation, biodiversity, and community engagement through disconnected workstreams.
For example, a nature-based intervention may reduce flood or overheating risk while improving biodiversity, amenity, and local wellbeing. The value comes not only from the intervention itself, but from incorporating those outcomes into asset planning, capital allocation, and performance monitoring.
One of the benefits of a regenerative strategy is that it reduces risk by embedding longer-term risks and dependencies in investment and asset management decisions (and enhances positive impact and corporate transparency at the same time). Therefore, it’s a great way for businesses to maintain competitive advantage in a tumultuous environmental context.
Secondly, advances in deep technology and artificial intelligence are expanding organizations’ ability to understand and anticipate sustainability-related challenges. It’s now possible to:
- enable more sophisticated predictive analysis;
- identify emerging risks, opportunities, and trends with greater confidence; and
- provide quick and easy ways to incorporate longer-term thinking into strategic decision-making.
What might regenerative strategy look like in practice?
Organizations across different sectors are already exploring what a regenerative future could look like in practice.
A good example is Nadara, which developed a regenerative offshore wind project. The idea wasn’t to build consensus through traditional economic compensation, but to create something that could keep generating value even independently of the offshore plant’s presence. The initiative helped transform local perceptions, shifting the project from something the community simply had to accommodate to a genuine growth opportunity for the territory.
BIP.Verco helps companies form and develop regenerative strategies. Enrico Foglia, Global Strategy Director at BIP.Verco, claims that the key to successful regeneration is collaboration. It cannot be achieved alone as it depends on multiple stakeholders working together to shape new solutions. Creating systemic change requires organizations to engage with startups, universities, communities, investors, policymakers, and innovators in the community around them.
Where should organizations start?
Ask the right questions
Regenerative strategy will not replace the need for credible targets, consistent data, or strong environmental management. It can, however, help real asset organisations connect these elements to a more coherent view of long-term value.
For GRESB participants, the immediate opportunity is to use existing assessment data and processes as a diagnostic tool. Ask:
- Where are policies not yet translating into asset action?
- Which material risks are being considered separately?
- Where could environmental and social interventions produce more durable outcomes?
By answering those questions, organizations can move beyond isolated sustainability initiatives and build a strategy that is measurable, investable, and relevant to both real-world performance and investor expectations.
Build your understanding
For organizations beginning to explore regeneration, building understanding is a logical place to start. Research, read whitepapers on the topic, and talk to those who have seen success. Then start asking how your projects and initiatives could impact the community you’re based in.
Enrico Foglia’s advice is to “start by recognizing that regeneration is not a project – it is a new way of creating value. Build partnerships. Listen to stakeholders. Invest in innovation. Be willing to experiment and learn. Most importantly, understand that the future will belong to organizations that place sustainable innovation at the core of their growth strategy. The opportunity is real, and the future is already being built.”
This article was written by Alex Steene, Senior Consultant, at BIP.Verco. Learn more about BIP.Verco here.