Deepki, a company founded in 2014 that claims to be the only one in the world offering a fully populated ESG data intelligence platform for the real estate sector, has launched an ESG Index.
The company, which revealed a €150 mln Series C funding round in March this year, has launched the freely accessible index with IEIF (Institut de l’Epargne Immobiliere et Fonciere), in order to help real estate players understand the performance of their assets and meet the challenges of the EU Taxonomy.
To achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, the European Commission has detailed certain performance criteria in the EU Taxonomy. According to these criteria, buildings in the top 15% of the national or regional building stock in terms of energy consumption will be considered sustainable investments and serve as a benchmark for the entire sector.
Deepki said its index represented the first European benchmark measuring real estate’s ESG performance. It provides a top 15% and top 30% in terms of performance in primary energy consumption and, later, final energy and CO2 emissions, for each asset class, by country.
By automatically collecting actual - rather than declarative - data, from more than 400,000 assets in 41 countries, Deepki said it could share in-depth insights into the real estate sector’s energy performance, by asset type and location.
With values for the top 15%, the market is able to identify those assets contributing to a reduction in climate change according to the EU Taxonomy. The top 30% will allow the market to determine which assets contribute substantially to the EU Taxonomy’s objectives and do no significant harm in the fight against climate change.
The index shows the top 15% of the retail building market in France consumes 179 kWhPE/m2 per year. The top 30% of the office building market in the UK consumes 168 kWhPE/m2 per year. Meanwhile, the top 15% of the logistics building market in Europe consumes 44 kWhPE/m2 per year.
With this first publication, Deepki and the IEIF said they were looking to encourage ‘dialogue surrounding energy performance between players at a national and European level, in order to construct a benchmark which is useful to all professionals within the industry’.
The Index has won plaudits from some heavyweight investors.
Daniel While, head of research, strategy and sustainability at French group, Primonial, said: ‘The was increasing demand from the market for a reliable, standardized benchmark at a European level. Deepki's Index will serve as a common standard against which we can compare ourselves.’
Grigor Georgiev Hadjiev, head of product and development at Allianz Real Estate West Europe, added: ‘Allianz Real Estate sees index initiatives as an opportunity to have harmonized Taxonomy alignment values for all countries in which we operate and for which we suffer from a lack of reliable benchmarks.’
Vincent Bryant, CEO and co-founder of Deepki, and Emmanuel Blanchet, COO and fellow co-founder, said: ‘We are extremely proud to be publishing this benchmark for the energy performance of the real estate sector. We believe this will allow industry professionals to better understand the sector’s performance and share their feedback with us.’
