The GRESB Foundation Board is pleased to share that it recently completed its annual review of the proposed changes for the 2024 GRESB Standards. The Foundation Board and the Foundation Secretariat are extremely grateful to all the members of the Foundation, all of whom share a commitment to positive market transformation powered by transparency and competitive differentiation. Each of them has volunteered countless hours of their time to ensure the GRESB Standards remain independent, mission driven, investor led, and reflective of the industries and members.
GRESB Foundation 2024 Roadmap
The Foundation has recently published its forward-looking 2024 Roadmap, which reflects upon future priorities for the Committees and the Standards for the near- and longer-term future. The document also highlights the Foundation’s hierarchy of advisory groups that help evolve the Standards, alongside critical support from the industry.
In addition to describing the mission and structure of the Foundation, the Roadmap describes key drivers for Standard development and areas of work prioritized for 2023-2024, along with issues under consideration for 2025 and beyond. High-level considerations that influence GRESB Standard Development include:
- Distinguishing market leaders and innovators
- Recognizing measured, operational performance
- Improving segmentation and specificity
- Aligning with public policy and regulation
- Improving data quality and interoperability
Importantly, the roadmap also reminds GRESB stakeholders of the various ways in which they can become involved with the continuing development of the Standards.
Changes to the 2024 GRESB Standards – process and outcomes
During the annual development cycle, the Real Estate and Infrastructure Standards Committees are charged with reviewing stakeholder feedback, as well as potential improvements to the GRESB Standards. The Standards Committees then make recommendations of their endorsed changes to the Foundation Board, which ultimately determines the advancements to the Standards.
The changes for 2024 broadly cover residential real estate, energy consumption and performance, GHG performance, building certifications, TCFD alignment, physical climate risk and transition risk, and a solution for infrastructure under development.
This year, changes to the 2024 Real Estate Standards include:
- Defining validity periods and impose an expiration for building certifications
- Introducing scoring for net-zero target setting
- Isolating EV charging station-related energy consumption from real estate asset operational energy consumption.
- Introducing scoring for energy efficiency as “supplemental” insight into operational performance of reported assets
- Introducing country-level benchmarking and scoring methodology, and provide additional insight into portfolio representativeness of intensity values in cases of incomplete data coverage by participants
- Allowing residential assets to report multiple energy ratings
- Expanding an indicator scope to cover strategy around climate-related opportunities
This year, changes to the 2024 Infrastructure Standards include:
- Introducing full new assessment for assets in the development phase, which will also affect the fund-level report
- Providing ability to report data coverage levels for Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and offer more points to participants that report full data coverage for Scopes 1 and 2
- Providing ability for participants to describe the methodology to determine material Scope 3 emissions
- Providing an impact assessment of climate-related opportunities and introduce a score for the existing scenario analysis indicators
It is also worth noting that there is on-going research around the topics of biodiversity, diversity equity and inclusion, embodied carbon, data quality and supply chain management.
Please refer to the documents below for a detailed description of the changes across the GRESB Real Estate, Infrastructure Fund, and Infrastructure Asset Standards, including information on the background and purpose of the changes, a detailed description of each change, and the impact on scoring and requirements.
- GRESB Real Estate Standard – List of Changes
- GRESB Real Estate Standard – List of Changes Summary Table
- GRESB Infrastructure Fund Standard – List of Changes
- GRESB Infrastructure Fund Standard – List of Changes Summary Table
- GRESB Infrastructure Asset Standard – List of Changes
- GRESB Infrastructure Asset Standard – Materiality & Scoring Tool
- GRESB Infrastructure Asset Standard – List of Changes Summary Table
You can learn more about the new GRESB Infrastructure Development Asset Standard, which will launch in April 2024, here.
GRESB Foundation update & 2024 Standards changes events
Please join us at one of upcoming GRESB Results events hosted in cities all around the world from October 24 through December 7. The events will provide an excellent opportunity to connect with other leaders in the sustainability industry, meet fellow participants, and to ask questions and provide feedback to GRESB. We look forward to seeing you – in person – soon!