UK and Western European investor Fore Partnership has committed to an ambitious target to ensure its business and buildings are net zero carbon by 2025.
Fore’s 2025 commitment puts it among a select few property businesses to have announced such an early target, and forms part of the firm’s strategy to drive wider positive social and environmental outcomes through a systemic approach to the built environment and its investments.
Fore’s approach includes a retrofit first strategy, focusing on reusing and repurposing buildings to extend their life spans, while retaining the embodied carbon in their structures. This is demonstrated by TBC London, a 110,000 sq ft (10,219 m2) forward-thinking workspace next to Tower Bridge, which recently achieved planning permission. The building will be 100% electric and zero carbon in operation, making it one of the UK’s most sustainable offices.
Basil Demeroutis, managing partner of the Fore Partnership, believes that recovery from the Covid-19 crisis must be driven by a climate-led economic plan that accelerates the transition to net-zero. ‘Low carbon, socially responsible design forms part of an important narrative that brings people to our cities, our communities, and our buildings. We must give our tenants and their stakeholders positive reasons why they should come work and play in our buildings, and transition away from being preoccupied with offices simply as places where work gets done,’ he said.
He added: ‘We believe the industry needs to consider its work in the context of urban systems, and thus our strategy focuses on taking a more systemic approach to driving environmental and social outcomes. This is essential if we are to ensure the transition to a low carbon economy is just and smart.’
Also today - World Environment Day - the World Green Building Council announced that over 95 signatories are now part of the Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment, nearly doubling participation in this collective statement of climate action since last year.
The WorldGBC’s Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment calls on businesses, organisations, cities, states and regions to reach net zero carbon operating emissions within their portfolios by 2030, and to advocate for all buildings to be net zero carbon in operation by 2050.
The UK government has set its own target for the nation as a whole that will require the UK to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
Fore was originally set up by a team out of Capricorn Investment Group, the family office of eBay’s first president and billionaire philanthropist Jeff Skoll, in 2012.
Since inception, FORE has acquired more than 93,000 m2 of commercial and residential property with a with a forecast exit value of more than £650 mln on behalf of private and institutional investors from Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East.
