GRESB has assessed 903 real estate companies, funds and developers on their sustainability, covering a record 79,000 assets across the globe.
This year’s GRESB Real Estate Assessment, which benchmarks environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, recorded a 5% like-for-like global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the largest drop in six years.
GRESB said the doubling of assets covered compared with last year had created “an unrivalled set of detailed ESG data and insights for the real estate investment market”.
Sander Paul van Tongeren, co-founder and managing director of GRESB, said: “This investor interest, backed up with accurate performance benchmarking, is empowering the spread of sustainable best practices across the world.”
Mahesh Ramanujam, chairman of the GRESB board of directors, and president and CEO of Green Business Certification, said: “The 2018 GRESB results are proving that expectations have fundamentally changed in the real asset sector, and investors are increasingly asking for greater transparency about the ESG performance of real asset portfolios.”
JP Morgan Asset Management and Nomura Real Estate were revealed among this year’s “global sector leaders” – companies and funds taking measureable steps to incorporate sustainability into their operations and communicate performance to investors.
JP Morgan US Core and Nomura Real Estate Master Fund were named “diversified” global sector leaders for private and listed markets, respectively.
For offices, Lendlease’s Australian Prime Property Fund Commercial and Kilroy Realty Corporation came out top for private and listed markets, respectively.
Lendlease was also named global sector leader for private retail for its Australian Prime Property Fund Retail, as was Unibail-Rodamco (since merged with Westfield) for listed retail.
