The results of the 2020 GRESB real estate assessment have been unveiled, in a year of changes for the global sustainability benchmark.
EMEA leaders in the ranking included UBS Asset Management, Segro, Tritax and Fore as well as funds managed by the likes of Bouwinvest, Altera, Amvest, Credit Suisse, Hines and CBRE Global Investors, all of whom achieved multiple sector and regional level wins.
This year, the benchmark introduced mandatory asset-level data reporting in an attempt to improve data quality, and implemented a new reporting structure that placed a higher weighting (70%) on the performance component towards the overall GRESB Score.
This benchmark-wide score reset resulted in the average GRESB Score falling to 70, compared to 72 in 2019.
Participation in the 2020 GRESB Real Estate Benchmark also grew amid accelerating investor demand for environmental, social and governance (ESG) insights. Data on key environmental performance indicators were reported at asset-level for more than 96,000 assets, across 64 countries, and aggregated to portfolio-level.
Roxana Isaiu, director real estate at GRESB said: 'Participation in the 2020 real estate assessment grew significantly from last year to cover 1,229 real estate portfolios worth more than $4.8 trn assets under management.
'While we still have many challenges to overcome on our way to a more sustainable future, it’s inspiring to see this collective commitment to ESG transparency and collaboration from across the global real estate industry.'
Private sector surge
The private sector led the growth trend, with participation expanding 32% to cover 953 non-listed portfolios. On the listed side, 271 REITs and property companies reported to GRESB, an increase of 13% on the previous year.
While the changes to the reporting structure and scoring weights make it difficult to draw detailed comparisons with previous years, several trend lines remain, according to GRESB.
Listed property companies still outperform the private sector, but with a smaller lead than previous years. The average GRESB Score for standing investments portfolios is 71 for listed companies and 70 for private entities. For development portfolios, the differences are slightly larger and favour the private sector – listed companies have an average score of 73, compared to 75 for private entities.
By sector, average GRESB Scores for offices continue to outperform other property types, but the other sectors are closing in.
Once again, Europe leads the world in transparency with the highest number of new entities participating in the benchmark, while the Americas cohort remains the largest in dollar terms globally, GRESB said. Americas is also the only region where the average score for the private sector (70) is higher than the listed sector (67).
After last year’s increase in like-for-like energy consumption, this year a global reduction of 2% was recorded. This decrease can be seen across all regions, with Europe having the largest reduction of 3.2%. Global GHG emissions and water consumption also fell by 3% and 1.5%, respectively.
