GRESB and B Capital Partners AG release open source ESG due diligence tool for Infrastructure Assets

GRESB and B Capital Partners AG announce the release of their stand-alone, open source ESG due diligence tool (ESG DD Tool) for infrastructure assets, which enables investors to gain a clear understanding of the ESG risks and opportunities of an asset as an input to investment decision making. Investors have been searching for guidance, transparency and quality in this area. This new ESG DD Tool helps establish a standard ESG due diligence process for infrastructure investing.

For the purpose of the ESG DD Tool, the GRESB Infrastructure Assessment for benchmarking assets has been adapted to reflect the requirements of the M&A/Investment process.

The ESG DD Tool is not tied to the GRESB Assessment cycle and can be used at any time. Considering ESG driven risks and opportunities (ESG factors) before investing will help investors make more informed investment decisions.

Investors typically face the following challenges in ESG due diligence:

  • lack of a structured process to identify all potential ESG factors,
  • difficulty in identifying the material ESG factors for any given asset,
  • quantification of the (material) ESG risks and opportunities, which can make or break the business case of an asset.
Invitation to provide feedback

The ESG DD Tool is open source. We invite the infrastructure and investment industry to provide feedback. GRESB and B Capital Partners will update the tool in response to feedback. Being Excel based, the tool can also be readily adapted by the user to meet his/her own due diligence needs.    

 

About GRESB

Mission-driven and investor-led, GRESB is the ESG benchmark for real assets. We work in collaboration with the industry to provide standardized and validated ESG data to the capital markets. Our coverage for infrastructure includes 500 infrastructure funds and assets. Combined, GRESB represents USD 4.5 trillion in real asset value. More than 100 institutional investors, with over USD 22 trillion AUM, use GRESB data to monitor their investments, engage with their managers, and make decisions that lead to a more sustainable real asset industry. We are a signatory to UNPRI. For more information, visit gresb.com. Follow @GRESB on Twitter.

About B Capital Partners

B Capital Partners AG is a partner-owned investment house, established in 2003 in Zurich. We exclusively focus on core sustainable infrastructure investing. Since 2010, we have invested and advised capital in excess of EUR 2.6bn across Europe. Our goal is to select superior infrastructure assets for our clients, while adhering to the highest corporate ethic as well as to state-of-the-art ESG standards. We are a signatory to UNPRI and a member of GRESB. For more information, visit
b-capitalpartners.com.