GRESB Newsletter | The 2022 reporting season has started

The GRESB Reporting season is underway with real estate and infrastructure managers logging into the GRESB Portal to start their Assessment. We’re looking forward to working with you during the next few months to ensure a smooth reporting process.

For any assessment-related questions, please contact us and we will get back to you within two working days. 

Response Check

You can now request a Response Check in the GRESB Portal via the Shop icon. Response Checks will be carried out by our Validation Partner, SRI, and feature a careful review of your Assessment response followed by a 1-hour discussion call. We strongly encourage participants to place their request and schedule their call as early as possible because there are a fixed number of appointments and it is not uncommon for requests to surpass availability. The request can be placed in the Portal as soon as the 2022 Assessment has been started. You can find out more about Response Checks here.

Product Updates

We are currently finalizing updates to the Portal interface for our upcoming Transition Risk Report, the TCFD Report and the SFDR Reporting Solution which will be introduced in the coming months.  We’re excited to announce that the Transition Risk Report and TCFD Report are now available to members prior to the products’ official launch next month. If you are interested in gaining early access to the reports, please contact Kevin Kirby (Transition Risk Report) or Cathy Granneman(TCFD Report). Please note that the Transition Risk Report is only available to Real Estate participants.

GRESB Foundation

Since being established last year, the GRESB Foundation has made significant progress creating the structure and processes needed to deliver on its ambitious work. Members have been appointed to the Foundation Board; both the Real Estate and Infrastructure Standards Committees; and now the Expert Resource Groups. 

With key roles in place, the Foundation is focused on drafting and finalizing the GRESB Standards Roadmap and the 2023 Standards by the end of the year.

Key issues include:

  • How to better address progress against core issues like Net Zero targets; Physical Climate Risk; Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; Embodied Carbon; Health & well-being; Human Rights; Biodiversity; and Cybersecurity
  • Moving from focusing more on scoring of effort to scoring outcomes
  • Better reflecting the different materiality of ESG issues across sectors and regions

Read the full GRESB Foundation update on our News & Updates page, which includes more information on stakeholder engagement, an update to the GRESB Roadmap and the endorsement of CRREM Pathways in the 2022 Real Estate Benchmark Reports.

Live Q&As

On April 13th and 14th, GRESB hosted live Q&As for the Infrastructure and Real Estate Assessments. During the webinar, participants and other stakeholders joined to ask questions about the 2022 GRESB Assessments. 

For your reference, please find the recordings below:

  • Infrastructure Asia Pacific here
  • Infrastructure Europe & North America here
  • Real Estate Asia Pacific here
  • Real Estate Europe & North America here

For an introduction to the Assessments, scoring, materiality explanations, and indicator-by-indicator training, you can check out our Training Platform.

GRESB Insights

Through GRESB Insights, we seek to highlight case studies on ESG integration in real assets, data-driven analyses into how the industry is responding to sustainability challenges, and educational articles exploring topics covered in the GRESB Assessments.

Below are the latest GRESB Insights: 

Our editorial calendar includes both fixed monthly topics. The editorial topic for May is “The Future of ESG”. If you would like to contribute to #GRESBinsights, you can find the submission form on this page here.

Upcoming Events

The Future of Construction Summit | May 4-5 | Virtual & Sydney

  • The Future of Construction Summit brings together leaders from Australia and the world to share ideas and build relationships to enable a more competitive, resilient, diverse and sustainable construction sector.

    Promo code FCON10GRESB

ESG in Real Estate Summit 2022 | June 8 – June 9 | Virtual & Sydney

  • The event will focus on what you need to do to be on top of investors, financiers and business partners expectations regarding decision useful ESG data, ESG reporting and ESG integrated enterprise processes.

    Promocode ESG10GRB

Sustainable Investment Forum | May 4-5 | Virtual

  • This Forum will explore the need for central governments to direct capital for a greener, inclusive recovery and redirect fiscal policy towards resilient, sustainable growth.

Infralogic Investors Forum | May 12 | Virtual & London

  • This forum brings together senior representatives from the European infrastructure community to discuss the business-critical issues, challenges and opportunities facing the European infrastructure industry.

CRE Tech Climate Global Leadership Summit |  17-19 May 2022 | Copenhagen

  • As the climate crisis grows more dire each day, and the entire world begins to focus on the real estate industry’s role as the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, there is no greater urgency to gather the world’s leading professionals to tackle this existential threat.

PERE Europe Summit | June 14-16 | London 

  • Connect with the region’s most influential institutional investors, fund and asset managers, developers, and strategic partners to scale and align your investment strategies to the essential real estate of the future.

ASIA PACIFIC

Asset Allocation Australia Summit | May 5 | Virtual & Sydney

  • As Australia moves on from lockdowns and a state of emergency this timely event will allow for peer networking and robust discussion amongst the decision makers in the nation’s leading institutional investors.

RI Japan 2022 | May 24 – May 25

  • Join opinion leaders from Japan and abroad to discover how urgent theoretical and practical issues can marry with the vision for a new era of capitalism in a sustainability-conscious world.

2022 ULI Asia Pacific Summit | May 24 – May 26 | Hong Kong

  • Despite the challenges Hong Kong has faced in the past years, it has remained resilient and is on the rebound.The programme is set to be a celebration of the city’s strengths with global themes that offer vision and optimism for our industry.

PERE Asia Summit 2022 | May 31 – June 2 | Singapore

  • A three day summit for networking and industry-leading content, that will help you secure capital allocations for global real estate investments and be at the forefront of Asian markets.
  • Jeehee (GRESB Asia representative) speaker

Infrastructure Investor Japan Korea Week 2022 | June 14 – June 16 | Virtual & Tokyo, Seoul

  • Join us to gain peer-to-peer insights and knowledge share with industry leaders. Gain instant access to the most influential network of Japanese and Korean investors and global fund managers to expand your network and advance your fundraising.
  • IGCC will again bring together leading experts and market practitioners to unpack and discuss the latest and next generation of investor practice on climate change.

ANREV Annual Conference | June 23 | Virtual & Singapore

  • The conference will bring together some of the world’s leading real estate investors to discuss the global outlook for the sector and Asia Pacific’s position in the post-pandemic recovery. 

AMERICAS

PERE Global Investor Forum | 18-19 May 2022 | San Francisco

  • Explore offshore investment opportunities across markets, sectors and strategies with private real estate’s leading managers & get deeper insight on what North American investors require from global fund managers

For a more detailed overview of upcoming events please visit our events page.

Explore a career with us 

GRESB is growing and looking for new people!

We have open positions for a Senior Data Engineer, Junior/Intermediate Data Engineer, Sales Director, and more. Check out our careers page to see all of our job postings. 

What we are reading 

  • The EU taxonomy regulation will require companies and investors to publish extra-financial information on their activities and investments from 2022. To support the industry, the OID is providing real estate players with a guide to understanding and applying the European taxonomy criteria to their activities. 
  • The world is careening toward levels of global warming that will have irreversible impacts. While a new landmark report says we already have the solutions, it also serves as a reminder of how policies lag far behind science, technology and even economics.
  • By using the Net Zero Investment Framework, Institutional investors have an opportunity to align their portfolios with the goals of the Paris Agreement by reducing financed emissions, increasing investment in climate solutions and engaging with companies to ensure timely decarbonisation.
  • ISSB delivers proposals that create comprehensive global baseline of sustainability disclosures