GRESB Quarterly, Oceania | Q1 2025

We are delighted to welcome you to the first Oceania newsletter of 2025. Whether you celebrated Valentine’s Day with a special someone, your family, friends, or completely ignored it–our hearts are full of gratitude for another year with our Oceania GRESB community. 

This year is already shaping up to be something special, filled with meaningful connections, inspiring events, and a shared passion for building a more sustainable future together. 

We are thrilled to welcome new members to our GRESB Foundation committees, have planned an incredible lineup of events to celebrate Chris Pyke’s visit in March, and have loved hearing about your plans and ambitions for 2025. 

So, read on, and let’s make 2025 a year to remember! 

Sarah Blankfield

Manager, Member Relations–Oceania  

It might not seem like we’re sending you roses when we release the annual updates to the GRESB Standards & Reference Guides, but we promise a lot of care has gone into these resources. Our Member Success Team have worked incredibly hard this year to make these documents more approachable and usable. You can now review them ahead of the 2025 reporting cycle:

• 2025 GRESB Real Estate Standard & Reference Guide
• 2025 GRESB Infrastructure Fund Standard & Reference Guide
• 2025 GRESB Infrastructure Asset Standard & Reference Guide
• 2025 GRESB Infrastructure Development Asset Standard & Reference Guide

In addition, the scoring documents are also available:

• 2025 Real Estate Scoring Document
• 2025 Infrastructure Fund Scoring Document
• 2025 Infrastructure Asset Scoring Document
• 2025 Infrastructure Development Asset Scoring Document

Finally, you can review our Technical FAQ documents for our most frequently asked questions about the Assessments:

• 2025 Real Estate Technical FAQ document
• 2025 Infrastructure Technical FAQ document

Learn more about the improvements to the 2025 reporting resources here.

Don’t forget, you can also review the changes documents that we released at the end of 2024–access here for all assessments.

Participant services currently available to support your 2025 prep include:

• QuickStart: Designed to guide new participants with one-on-one support, so you can feel at home in the GRESB community. The new GRESB QuickStart service has been designed to help new participants familiarize themselves with GRESB quickly so they can better navigate the assessment process. At its core, the service focuses on one-to-one engagement with GRESB’s Member Success team to cover all they need to know for a seamless reporting period.

  Available January–May 2025 (subject to availability)

• Hot off the press: We launched our 2025 Investor Member Survey earlier this month. Responding will help us better serve you by improving our understanding of your investment approach related to sustainability; how you use GRESB results, products, and services; and how you engage with your managers and direct investments.
  • Investors can provide their feedback here
• Last chance: We cherish your thoughts! We encourage you to provide your feedback on your 2024 Assessment experience through our Participant Member Surveys. Your feedback is vitally important to help us improve our service–complete the surveys below.
  • Real Estate
  • Infrastructure Fund
  • Infrastructure Asset (including Development Asset)

Chris Pyke visit

Our Chief Innovation Officer, Chris Pyke, will once again be in Sydney for GBCA’s TRANSFORM in March (yay, visitors!)–and we plan to give him no time for jetlag in his schedule:

• For our Infrastructure Participant Members: GRESB Foundation Roundtable
  Monday, 17 March | 10am-12pm AEDT | Sydney & online | Register
• For our Real Estate Participant Members: GRESB Foundation Roundtable
  Tuesday, 18 March | 11am-1pm AEDT | Sydney & online |
  This event has reached capacity – please contact [email protected] directly if you’d like to attend
• For our Investor Members: Investor Masterclass (Real Estate & Infrastructure)
  Tuesday, 18 March | 3-5pm AEDT | Sydney & online | Register

Aotearoa New Zealand–Kia ora!

Steve and I can’t wait to reconnect with our members in April and celebrate the value of green buildings at a special event in Auckland.

The primary purpose of our visit is to host an event alongside partners JLL and NZGBC about the value of green buildings. In advance of the registration page being available, please express your interest and I’ll follow up with formal registration.

Thursday, 10 April | 8-10am NZST | JLL, Auckland | Expression of Interest

In addition, we will be reaching out to our Aotearoa-based members for catchups

APAC Road Ahead

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 held our APAC version of The Road Ahead: GRESB’s Commitment for the Future webinar on 5 December.

It is now available to watch on demand. You can review answers to the questions asked during the Q&A session here.

Partner events

Plan your 2025 schedule with events from our Partners. 

Understanding climate finance for resilient infrastructure

From our newest Industry Partner, Altiorem, this upcoming event is the launch for their latest Expert Guide, exploring mobilizing finance, balancing adaptation and mitigation, innovative mechanisms, and addressing country-specific challenges, while assessing risks and barriers.

3 March 2025, 4-5pm AEDT | Online – free | Register now

Infralogic Investors Forum Australia

This event features a stellar lineup of industry leaders and brings together over 160 LPs from sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, family offices, and private wealth. I’m excited to be attending and to see some of you there.

Infralogic have given us a 15% discount for GRESB members. Use promo code “IIFGRESB” when registering.

4 March 2025 | Sydney & online | Register now

GBCA TRANSFORM

The Green Building Council of Australia’s 7th annual TRANSFORM conference is the industry-leading event at the forefront of the sustainable built environment. TRANSFORM creates the space for industries to come together, collaborate, and develop solutions that will create meaningful change at scale. Chris Pyke will be speaking on “The evolution of sustainable finance and Scope 3 reporting” panel.

Join Chris, Steve, and me at the event.

19-20 March 2025 | Sydney | Register now

ASCI Conference

Join the 2025 ACSI Conference, where Australia’s leading superannuation funds, global asset owners, industry experts, and thought leaders come together to focus on ESG issues.

2 April 2025 | Melbourne | Register now

RIAA Australia Conference

The RIAA Conference Australia is a must-attend event for finance, sustainability, and industry practitioners to delve into the pressing issues that define the responsible investment landscape today.

28-29 May 2025 | Sydney | Register now

New GRESB Foundation committee members 

We’re delighted that two new members from the region have joined GRESB Foundation committees this year:

• Madelaine Broad from NSW Treasury Corporation (TCorp) was accepted onto the Infrastructure Standards Committee
• Kieran Seal from CBRE was accepted as a member of the Real Estate Expert Resource Group

Our hearts are also filled with gratitude for the continued commitment of our existing committee members. You can view the full list on our website.

If you’re interested in getting involved, applications are accepted year-round–further information.

Products to fall in love with

• REAL Solutions is GRESB’s dynamic suite of tools designed to navigate the sustainability, resilience, and efficiency of real assets. REAL Benchmarks, the first tool from the REAL Solutions family, was launched in April.
  Further information, contact us for a demo.
• The GRESB Accredited Professional (AP) Program is now available to everyone. Looking to enhance your expertise and make an even greater impact in 2025? GRESB AP offers individuals the opportunity to deepen their understanding, reporting, and management of sustainability data and performance within the GRESB Real Estate Assessment.
  We will soon be launching AP for Infrastructure as well as the 2025 Real Estate AP exam.
  Learn more and contact us to discuss pricing for multiple exams.

IREI: Valuing Sustainability

In my latest article for IREI APAC, I examine the evolving role of sustainability in real estate valuations, highlighting the integration of sustainability into global standards and addressing challenges like data gaps and future climate risks.

Read here

Scoring insights: A series unpacking the role of GRESB Scores

In this series of five articles, GRESB Chief Innovation Officer Chris Pyke explores what GRESB Scores represent and their implications for sustainability and investment performance. Every score tells a story!

Read here

Let’s Tax Carbon–Ross Garnaut

A big read, but I finished this collection of essays from economist Ross Garnaut about Australia becoming a full-employment, renewable energy superpower, and it’s full of big ideas. From Australia’s political history to our current low-carbon opportunities, it’s a thought-provoking book.

Share the love by finding it in your favourite local independent bookstore

Defining Infrastructure Net Zero

This new discussion paper from ASBEC, GBCA, ISC, and Mott MacDonald is the first step in establishing a clear, industry-wide definition for net-zero infrastructure. This is needed to examine the sector’s strategic alignment on priority climate action.

Read here

Net-Zero Targets for Infrastructure Assets: Starting with Transparency

And if you’re looking for more insight into net zero targets for infrastructure, you can delve into this article by Erik Landry, GRESB’s Director, Climate Change. In it, he explores the challenges and opportunities of setting net-zero targets for this diverse asset class.

Read here

Global Risks Report 2025 

The World Economic Forum’s 20th edition of its Global Risks Report reveals an increasingly fractured global landscape, with escalating geopolitical, environmental, societal, and technological challenges. Not one for a cheerful read.

Read here

Data Centres and Climate goals

Chris Pyke has contributed to four articles on data centres and climate goals:

• Investor-owned data centers (sic): Sustainability strategies for the year ahead: A guest article from Chris in Intelligent Data Centres exploring the evolving strategies data centres are employing to address the dual challenges of rising energy demands and sustainability pressures.
• The data center (sic) boom threatens climate goals. How to fight back: An article from Trellis, covering some of the climate impacts of the data centre boom with commentary from Chris.
• Data centres are booming – with and without AI: [Paywall] An article from Infrastructure Investor, with commentary from Chris, exploring the demands on data centres beyond AI.
• Sustainability by the numbers: How ESG metrics attract capital to data centers (sic): A guest article from Chris in Data Center POST discussing how sustainability data can drive operational efficiency, reduce risks, and attract investor capital.

Love hearing fresh perspectives? GRESB’s podcast series continued this quarter with the following new shows available to stream:

• Has ESG become too big for sustainability reporting?
• From tenant surveys to success: Data-driven decisions in Commercial Real Estate 
• The road travelled: Building GRESB’s Real Estate Standards

Access all episodes here