GRESB Quarterly, Americas | Conservice on solving the climate risk puzzle; Regional Insights events in NY & Chicago; 2025 Standards updates

We are once again pleased to bring our GRESB Americas Members and Partners a dedicated, regional newsletter with important insights and updates. Our Americas-based team is focused on serving and supporting your needs and this newsletter is one of the tools we rely upon to share useful information.

To say it has been a “unique quarter” for GRESB is certainly an understatement. We remain steadfast in our commitment to transparency and improving our process, thanks to the thoughtful feedback many of you have shared.

In this newsletter, you will find links to updates to the 2025 GRESB Standards, opportunities to learn more about GRESB’s near-term plans and commitment as an organization, and an exciting expansion of our Results Consultation service. All of these components have been directly impacted by much of this region’s feedback over the past 12 weeks.

We are also thankful to GRESB Global Partner Conservice for offering up their thought leadership around attacking the climate risk puzzle in this edition. It is a critical topic that many of our members are grappling with at this very moment.

Finally, as we approach the holiday season, we want to extend our gratitude to our members and partners. Whether you’re a long-standing member or new to GRESB, it’s a privilege to support your sustainability journey.

On behalf of the entire GRESB Americas team, we wish you a joyful holiday season and a prosperous 2025!

Sincerely,

Tom Idzal
GRESB Head of Americas

Solving the climate puzzle is like piecing together a complex jigsaw. The first piece is quantifying your carbon footprint, giving you a clear picture of your starting point. Next, you assess physical risks, identifying the challenges posed by climate change. Once you’ve mapped out these risks, the next puzzle piece is mitigation: finding solutions to protect your business and adapt. Finally, the last piece is documenting your climate story: sharing the full picture with stakeholders. Each step fits together, creating a complete, ROI-driven approach that helps your organization thrive in a world focused on sustainability.

Read GRESB Global Partner Conservice’s four-step guide to solving the climate risk puzzle.

GRESB is pleased to announce the release of the 2025 GRESB Standards updates.

These updates to the GRESB Real Estate and Infrastructure Standards are driven by the GRESB Foundation, maintaining the direction of travel established by the Foundation Board while reflecting the Foundation’s commitment to the evolving needs of the industry and lessons learned from 2024.

Real Estate Standard updates

Updates to the 2025 GRESB Real Estate Standard provide transparency about development plans through 2027 and reflect a commitment to stability and a predictable multi-year development process.

These changes introduce new and enhanced criteria for embodied carbon, renewable energy, biodiversity, and building certifications, and also address sector-specific considerations for residential real estate.

Infrastructure Standards updates

The Infrastructure Fund, Asset, and Development Asset Standards updates include:

• Infrastructure Asset: New and enhanced criteria for net zero target setting; increased data comparability and quality through changes to Scope 2 and 3 emissions reporting and the introduction of data coverage reporting for key performance metrics; verification and assurance for larger assets for GHG emissions data.
• Fund: Improved rules for asset-to-fund aggregation to ensure assets using the Grace Period do not impact fund scores or data; new funds can now report without score penalty for partial coverage in their first or second reporting year.
• Development Asset: Indicators and metrics that are no longer relevant have been retired to reduce reporting burden.

Read the full 2025 GRESB Standards updates here.

GRESB’s Commitment for the Future

We heard the need for more support, better training, clearer communication, and more proactive engagement from GRESB to better anticipate the evolution of the GRESB Standards in the future. We are fully committed to meeting these needs.

Join us on November 21 at 11 am ET for a live webinar with Q&A to hear from GRESB on:

• Lessons learned from 2024 results
• The support we provide to members
• Putting context to the 2025 Real Estate and Infrastructure Standards
• How we will work with the Foundation to improve change management

At the end of the webinar, we’ll hold a dedicated Q&A session to address any questions you may have. Your insights and feedback are essential, and we look forward to an engaging and valuable discussion.

Register and submit your questions here.

Questions about your GRESB Benchmark Report? The GRESB Results Consultation is available through January 15, 2025.

In 2024, organizations that used the GRESB Results Consultation service increased their GRESB Scores by 6.5–10.8 points on average. This service is designed to help participants identify and prioritize focus areas that will make the biggest impact on their GRESB Score and ESG goals.

In a recent episode of The Pulse, our Chief Customer Success Officer Mathilde Petriat and Sustainability Director at QuadReal Property Group Nisha Agrawal explain how the Results Consultation supports organizations in understanding their scores and advancing their ESG programs effectively.

“Through the program, organizations can clearly figure out and understand where to focus efforts and what initiatives they should implement or drive forward more in order for their ESG programs to have the greatest amount of impact, and how that’s then going to impact their expected GRESB results.” – Nisha Agrawal, Sustainability Director at QuadReal Property Group.

Participants who make use of a Results Consultation this year will have the opportunity to book a 1-hour discussion with the GRESB Member Success Team in Q1 2025 to discuss the 2025 Standards updates in more detail.

Learn more about the Results Consultation and request yours in the GRESB Portal.

Following the release of the GRESB 2024 Public Results last month, we’re thrilled to bring you tailored insights at our upcoming Regional Insights events, hosted in collaboration with GRESB Partners. These in-person gatherings provide a unique opportunity to delve into the data and examine how the latest ESG trends and performance metrics are shaping your region.

Join us—alongside hundreds of industry experts and peers—at select locations across the Americas. After a successful series on the West Coast, we’re now heading to New York and Chicago where we’ll share the latest market insights for the Americas region.

Space is limited, so register your interest today!

The second annual GRESB Americas Institutional Investor Forum, in partnership with the Real Estate Limited Partner Institute (RELPI), took place on October 1 at New York City’s historic Chelsea Market. More than 150 attendees participated in a full-day conference covering critical business issues faced by institutional investors — from portfolio risk exposure to weather-driven events and net zero carbon commitments, to evolving regulatory requirements.

A strong opening panel — featuring Michael McGowan of CalSTRS, Han Yik of NYSTRS, Jamie Statter, Office of the New York City Comptroller, and Nick Russell of StepStone Group — set the tone. Each speaker highlighted LP-driven carbon reduction strategies and actions, climate damage risk mitigation techniques, and effective governance tactics including tying fund promote structures to both IRR financial hurdles and achieving specific non-financial ESG KPI metrics.

The GRESB Real Estate Lender Roundtable panel included private credit lenders from Ares, PGIM, Kayne Anderson, and Nuveen discussing best practices for integrating sustainability-oriented considerations into private credit transactions and ongoing loan portfolio risk monitoring.

GRESB’s industry association partners — PREA, NAREIM, ULI, IMT, NAREIT — each led breakout discussions covering current business imperatives:

• Building performance standard regulations
• Capital market demands for non-financial metric transparency
• Decarbonization initiatives and actions
• “S” metrics impacts on investment returns

The afternoon keynote interview with Steve Hason of APG, GRESB’s founding Investor Member, reinforced GRESB’s role as the “institutional real estate industry North Star” by recognizing 15 years of industry progress since the inception of GRESB in 2009. GRESB would like to thank RELPI for the amazing event, including the celebrations to commemorate GRESB’s 15th Anniversary.

Check out the latest episodes of The Pulse by GRESB:

• GRESB at 15: From early days to new ventures
• GRESB Results Consultation: Turning data into ESG excellence
• Starting at the bottom: the GRESB origin story
• Brown to Green: Measuring the impact of sustainable improvements in real estate investments
• Correct and conquer: Updates to the GRESB Assessment Correction service

Or you can find the whole series on Spotify and YouTube.

• REITworld: 2024 Annual Conference | Nareit
  November 18-21| Las Vegas, NV
  Hear first-hand from REIT executives and experts in the real estate investment community on the latest insights, market intelligence, and new investment opportunities.
• Responsible Investor USA 2024 | PEI
  December 3-4 | New York, NY
  Join the leading voices in sustainable finance to tackle the industry’s most pressing challenges and engage in two days of networking, thought-provoking panels, and in-depth discussions. Tom Idzal, Head of Americas at GRESB, and Paul Vozzella, Director, Americas at Asset Impact will be speaking.
• Infrastructure Investor Network: America Forum | PEI
  December 4-5 | New York, NY
  Join North America’s most influential investors, fund managers, and policy makers for two days of unparalleled networking and discussions on the rise of infrastructure secondaries, the impact of the US election, and much more. Jensen Hodge, Sales Director, Americas at GRESB will be speaking.
• IWBI Social Sustainability Summit | IWBI
  December 13 | New York, NY
  The summit convenes industry leaders, policymakers, and innovators to explore sustainable finance, the transition to a low-carbon economy, global regulatory trends in sustainability, and innovative approaches to enhance wellbeing. Chris Pyke, Chief Innovation Officer at GRESB will be speaking.
• The 3rd Annual ESG & Decarbonizing Real Estate Forum | IMN
  February 4-5 | Nashville, TN
  A must-attend event for ESG leaders in real estate investment, ownership, and operations to discuss the mission critical role of ESG for the real estate market.
• Responsible Investment Forum: New York | PEI
  March 4-5 | New York, NY
  Join sustainable finance practitioners and thought leaders to gain insights on the key themes and trends impacting investments in North America and beyond, including approaches to decarbonization and net zero, biodiversity, and how sustainability drives returns.

See full event calendar.

The rise of sustainable building ordinances: Benchmarking, audits and retro-commissioning, and building performance standards | Verdani Partners

Decarbonizing America’s power grid: Challenges and opportunities on the road to 2035 | Institutional Investing in Infrastructure

Thanks to our Global Partner Conservice for sponsoring and contributing to this newsletter.