Leading property firms launch major sustainability alliance

A number of leading global real estate companies announced the launch on Friday of a partnership dedicated to assessing and improving the environmental performance of existing buildings. Main partners include AEW Europe, Allianz Real Estate, AXA Real Estate, GE Capital Real Estate Europe, ING Real Estate Investment Management, KanAm Grund and LaSalle Investment Management, together with international service providers such as Bureau Veritas, Socotec, WSP Environmental, Drees & Sommer AG, Deloitte Real Estate Advisory and Schneider.

The Green Rating Alliance is a not-for-profit association with a tool and benchmarking platform designed to assess and improve the environmental performance of existing buildings. Having been developed and trialed for several years, the aim of the Alliance is to bring Green Rating TM to the wider property industry, as well as exchanging best practice and continuously enhancing the methodology, tools and indicators.

Designed by property practitioners for the property sector, Green Rating TM is a decision-making tool which offers a new approach to assessing and improving the environmental performance of existing buildings across borders, allowing investors and portfolio managers to enhance the value of their assets and to initiate constructive dialogue with tenants for improvement actions, on a factual basis. The Green Rating TM assessments are carried out by carefully selected, accredited and trained consultants from reputed audit firms who perform an efficient third-party evaluation of the building.

A key distinctive element of the Green Rating TM is that assessments also result in practical recommendations for improving the performance of buildings and portfolios through improvement of occupier behavior and management of operations, as well as investments for technical enhancement.

To date the environmental performance of over 4 million m² of European property space in more than 60 cities across 12 countries has already been measured by the Green Rating TM. With a platform to provide a consistent benchmark on environmental performance of buildings now firmly established, the assessment scheme is available to property owners, occupiers as well as consultants or valuers. Whilst initially it will work through its existing European network, the Green Rating Alliance will look to expand to other regions such as Asia-Pacific and America.

The management of the Green Rating Alliance is governed by a board of directors comprising the current members of the organisation, and chaired by Pierre Vaquier, CEO of AXA Real Estate. Combined, current members of the Alliance manage in excess of EUR 200 bn of real estate across Europe and this number is expected to continue to grow significantly over time as other leading property companies join the organisation.