GRESB and the future of Health & Well-being
Today marks the end of the GRESB Health & Well-being week. This didn’t mean that we all got to work from our respective oases of inspiration for the past 5 days (although the Amsterdam office does a very good job at keeping us alert and creative), but that our internal “to do” list was driven […]
Read more Recap: 2017 Edition of the Sustainability Certification Barometer
On Tuesday, 27 June in Paris, and on Wednesday, 28 June in London, the 2017 edition of the Sustainability Certification Barometer was presented by Green Soluce, along with the main certification bodies and expert keynote speakers. This report, the first and only study to provide reliable and up-to-date figures on sustainable building certifications across Europe, […]
Read more 4 ESG Takeaways for the Real Estate Sector from the 2017 GRESB Siemens Spring Conference
The first annual GRESB Spring Conference took place last week at the Crystal in London, hosted by Siemens, and those of us who were there are still processing the many insights and takeaways from the event. The venue was full of inspiring people — attendees, presenters and moderators — all gathered in one place. The combined […]
Read more GRESB Outlook – 2017 and Beyond
2017: Stable assessments and new products & services When we launched GRESB more than seven years ago, our main goal was to help companies and funds assess the sustainability performance of their portfolios. At the time, there weren’t many programs linking companies and investors to sustainability metrics. Fast forward to today and sustainability has now […]
Read more Real Estate Just Got Its Own Industry Classification – It Deserves Its Own ESG Rating
Effective today MSCI and the S&P’s Dow Jones Indices’ Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), will add its first additional Sector since inception in 1999: Real Estate. That’s big news! Historically real estate has been included as part of the Financial Sector alongside banks, diversified financials and insurance companies. Establishing real estate as its own categorization […]
Read more Private Equity & ESG Disclosure: a View across the Risk Spectrum
As PERE Research & Analytics shared in its Q3 Fundraising Report, value-add and opportunistic real estate investment strategies are topping the charts in both number of funds seeking capital as well as in total equity amounts targeted. According to Preqin’s Q3 2016 Fundraising Update, Q3 alone saw 13 value-add and 8 opportunistic funds hold a […]
Read more 2016 GRESB Real Estate Assessment: What You Need to Know about Your Results
The 2016 GRESB data has been available for over a month, and judging from the phone calls and emails received by the GRESB Helpdesk, the 750+ entities who submitted their ESG data are busy evaluating their performance and writing internal reports explaining how they did. At the same time, the GRESB team has been playing […]
Read more The Massive Need for Infrastructure Investment and Climate Change – a Balancing Act
Infrastructure is the foundation and connective tissue of society. In its broadest sense, it covers everything above and below surface (including both land and water). That’s buildings; energy generation (renewable and conventional) and transmission; road, rail and the various modes of transport using it; transport hubs like ports and airports; clean and dirty water; etc. […]
Read more Five Key Takeaways from the New GRESB Health & Well-being Module
The GRESB Health and Well-being Module is a new tool to understand how property companies and funds around the world are promoting health and well-being in their internal operations and through the real estate and services they offer to customers. The Module is predicated on the recognition that health and well-being is emerging as an […]
Read more ESG Performance in Australia and New Zealand: the Heat Is on
Looking at the 2016 GRESB results, Australia and New Zealand again are leading the pack in terms of outperforming the other regions on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) aspects. Besides strong government support, this is a direct result of a unique approach by the region’s property market. On one hand, the market has shown a […]
Read more Can the Marriage of Big Data and Sustainability Help Bankers Avoid Another CRE Debacle?
Banks are using big data to stress test and manage credit risk associated with commercial mortgages. A recent article in American Banker highlighted that even community banks, with under $5 billion in assets, are using market and tenant data software to inform commercial real estate (CRE) lending decisions and to monitor exposures. In light of recent warnings from regulators about growing […]
Read more Real Estate Lenders Are Ready for Change
September marked the release of the 2016 GRESB Debt Assessment results which were simultaneously released alongside the GRESB Real Estate Assessment results [see results presentation]. The 2016 global snapshot of the lending market results reflects GRESB’s improved Debt Assessment framework. This resulted in increasing the number of participants from 10 to 18, including two primary lenders which underlines the […]
Read more What Obama, the Real Estate Sector, and 130 Investors Have in Common
While a typical summer is characterized by a lack of real news, leading the press to cover anything that’s even remotely newsworthy—or not – (we have a word for it in Dutch, “cucumber time”), the past two month have yielded enough stories to keep the average journalist busy: the Olympics, flooding in Louisiana, the ongoing […]
Read more Hold Your Horses – 3 More Days until the Release of the 2016 GRESB Data
For most people, the first week of September means the end of summer and returning to work, but for the real estate industry, the first week of September means the release of the GRESB data – how does the industry stack up when it comes to sustainability performance? With only three days to go until […]
Read more Tips and Tricks for GRESB Infrastructure Participants: Understanding Evidence & References
This is the first year for the new GRESB Infrastructure Assessment. The Assessment is not a pilot – it’s the real deal – but we also have a lot to learn about how to create an effective assessment for the diverse infrastructure asset class. Part of the learning process involves creating a practical vocabulary for […]
Read more GRESB and WELL: Complementary Tools to Promote Transparency and Leadership on Health and Well-being
Health and well-being has emerged as an important issue for real estate companies and funds. Investors and tenants have expressed interest and there is increasing recognition that the promotion of health and well-being can contribute to competitive differentiation, value creation, and risk management. GRESB and its partners explored this with a series of events in […]
Read more Embracing Performance Indicators
In a blog post earlier this year about ESG and Real Estate, GRESB CEO Nils Kok mentioned the “GRESB Six Stages of Grief.” I can imagine that a month and a half into the 2016 Assessment some of our property company and fund manager participants are deep in stage 2: Anger. Does this sound like you? […]
Read more The Value of an Integrated Sustainability Strategy for Real Estate Companies and Funds
Last week was time for the 2016 installment of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Better Building Summit. As in prior years, the Summit was full of friends and leaders from across the real estate industry. I had the opportunity to participate in a session moderated by Dr. Jason Hartke (DOE), David deVos (Prudential Real […]
Read more Green Bond Roadshows: Investor Benefits
GRESB Green Bond Working Group, March 2016 The fourth meeting of the GRESB Green Bond Working Group addressed the constructs, protocols and benefits of a green bond roadshow. Speakers included Victoria Clarke from HSBC’s green bond investment banking group, Christophe Garot representing two-time green bond issuer Unibail-Rodamco and Viktor Stunnenberg who serves as Senior Portfolio […]
Read more Assessing Tomorrow’s Building Stock Today
GRESB started back in 2009 with three founding institutional investors looking to assess the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of their real estate portfolios and their investment managers. The first assessment was performed in 2010, and saw nearly one hundred property companies and funds reporting on their ESG efforts and achievements. Fast forward to […]
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