GRESB is a global organization that aims to ensure sustainable real assets- that meet current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet the needs of their own.
The GRESB Real Estate Assessment assesses and compares the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) performance of listed property companies, private property funds, developers and investors that invest directly in real estate. This assessment allows companies to compare themselves against their peers using predetermined criteria. This benchmark is a true asset that enables real estate companies to improve the sustainability of their investment portfolios.
Why participate in the GRESB Real Estate Assessment?
First of all, the GRESB Real Estate Assessment allows you to take stock of your ESG performance and to better structure it in order to improve its effectiveness. If you do not have an ESG strategy, the Assessment allows you to define one that is in line with your needs and challenges.
In addition, predetermined monitoring performance indicators allow you to take stock of the performance of your ESG strategy in order to identify areas for improvement and thus improve the attractiveness of your portfolio.
Finally, the information gathered as part of the Assessment allows you to better communicate with the various stakeholders – your investors in particular- increasingly concerned about the sustainability of your assets.
Are there any difficulties associated with completing the GRESB Real Estate Assessment?
The qualitative and quantitative information that needs to be gathered in order to complete the Assessment is often dispersed between several in-house departments (CSR department, asset management, etc.) and external actors (service providers, suppliers, etc.). Collecting all the data necessary for the GRESB Assessment is a real challenge! In order to facilitate completing GRESB, the first step will involve automating the collection of existing data, as they represent a true gold mine.
Another difficulty also lies in the granularity of the information to be centralized:
- Corporate-level information (e.g. presence of an ESG manager)
- Asset-level information (e.g. overall asset consumption)
- Consumption by common areas and private areas (the latter constituting personal data)
- Consumption by various tenants.
Once this data has been collected, it is essential to go through a phase of data reliability. This will also make it possible to know precisely the overall level of the portfolio’s consumption as well as the consumption at the level of each building and tenant.
Finally, it is recommended that all data be centralized in order to facilitate access and to complete the Assessment more easily.
What’s new at GRESB in 2020?
2020 is bringing many changes. Don’t worry, no new indicators will be added, on the contrary, some will even be removed to facilitate completing the Assessment!
This time, changes are mainly structural. They result from the introduction of three distinct components:
- Management
- Performance
- Development
Companies investing in existing assets will be subject to the Management & Performance Components. Companies building new assets will be subject to the Management & Development Components. Finally, companies undergoing mixed activities will be subject to all three components of the GRESB Real Estate Assessment.
A webinar dedicated to improving your GRESB Real Estate Assessment strategy
Would you like to learn about good practices to facilitate completing the GRESB Assessment and maximizing your score? Register for the webinar “Easily complete the GRESB assessment thanks to your data” offered by Deepki.
This webinar is available in English and French:
- The French session will take place on February 13th from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. and will be hosted by Emmanuel BLANCHET, COO & Co-founder of Deepki and Alexandre GHRIBI, Business Developer at Deepki;
- The English session will take place on February 19th from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. and will be hosted by Vincent BRYANT, CEO & Co-founder of Deepki and Alexandre GHRIBI, Business Developer at Deepki.
- The Spanish session will take place on February 18th from 16:00 to 17:00 p.m. and will be hosted by Joan INDABURU, Project Manager and Xana MUNIZ, Executive Director in Spain.
- The Italian session will take place on February 18th from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. and will be hosted by Valentina MAURO, Executive Director in Italy and Clémence MIGNOLA, Project Manager.