March newsletter | Assessments opening on April 1; GRESB announces REAL Solutions and REAL Benchmarks

We are thrilled to announce the forthcoming release of GRESB REAL Solutions, a dynamic suite of tools designed to empower real assets managers and investors with actionable insights into the sustainability, resilience, and efficiency of assets.

Powered by aggregated asset-level data derived from GRESB’s annual real estate assessment, REAL Solutions encompasses actionable information on targets, operational performance, building certifications, energy ratings, and efficiency measures, equipping investors and managers with the right tools to understand and improve asset performance.

REAL Benchmarks is the first tool available from the REAL Solutions product family, which will be released in April. Designed for real estate managers and listed companies, REAL Benchmarks offers a customizable dashboard to privately and securely analyze the contribution of each individual asset to portfolio performance. The tool allows users to compare all or a filtered set of portfolio assets against a series of performance benchmarks derived from the GRESB database.

Read the announcement here.

Public consultation on building certifications

The GRESB Real Estate Standard applies several evaluation criteria to recognize and score building certification schemes. Current criteria provide a large number of schemes with full recognition and limited information to inform scoring and analysis. Therefore, the Real Estate Standards Committee (RESC) is collaborating with industry stakeholders to:

• Elevate best-in-class schemes, encouraging broader adoption within the industry
• Refine the list of accepted schemes, recognizing those with the greatest credibility and impact
• Enhance transparency on key evaluation metrics, informing investment decision-making

Learn more about the public consultation and sign up to provide your feedback here.

Infrastructure Standards Committee (ISC) update

The ISC has recently discussed the importance of data coverage, agreeing on the need to develop changes to reward coverage across all key performance metrics in 2025. Understanding data coverage levels allows data consumers to make more informed management decisions while also opening the door to developing other insights and comparisons over time and between entities. Furthermore, the Committee unanimously agreed on the need to standardize Scope 2 reporting across all reporting entities and will score location-based reporting while also allowing for the option to report market-based values. This approach provides consistency across all reporting entities, while also acknowledging the importance of market-based efforts from infrastructure actors.

GRESB Foundation update 

The Foundation Board recently hosted its annual in-person meeting in London and the overarching theme was “Savvy investors look beyond the simple GRESB Score.” To provide investors with value beyond a simple numerical score, the Foundation is discussing how to:

• Reduce reporting burden to help GRESB Members efficiently address their regulatory and voluntary data demands
• Provide decision-useful information to investors to better inform the ongoing dialogue with managers
• Mitigate against greenwashing to support the efficient flow of capital toward sustainable assets

A critical part of this effort involves improving communication with Investor Members, who have recently begun receiving a quarterly update from the Foundation. Investor Members are also encouraged to register for the upcoming Investor Masterclass, which will be held virtually and in person in Melbourne, Australia, on May 14 at 10am AEST/May 13 at 8pm EDT and express interest in attending an Investor Masterclass (virtual and in person) in London, UK on May 21.

All Members are also welcome to send any questions for the Foundation to [email protected].

The Pulse by GRESB is a new content series featuring the GRESB team, partners, GRESB Foundation members, and other experts. You can find the series on Spotify, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Listen to the latest episodes below:

• Episode 2: Evolution towards performance
• Episode 3: Road to ’24: What’s left to prepare for GRESB participation?

The theme this month was “Data Quality & Coverage.” Below are the latest GRESB Insights on this and other rolling topics:

• How submeters can unlock your data and boost your coverage | Redaptive
• The power of water use visibility and real-time data | HydroPoint
• The very real price of quality data in multi-tenant real estate | Utopi
• Navigating the evolving ESG data landscape: Challenges, trends, and solutions | Verdani Partners
• Can we make tenant data collection easier? | EVORA Global

See all of our GRESB Insights here. Next month’s topic is “Building Certifications.”

See the 2024 GRESB editorial calendar and submit an article here.

GRESB staff also weighed in on important topics this month. Read our latest insights on value-added and opportunistic funds, decarbonization targets, and the importance of infrastructure development in emerging markets below:

• Unlocking potential: The rise of value-added and opportunistic funds in the GRESB Real Estate Benchmark | Alexandre Breulhez, Senior Analyst, Member Success
• We’ve broken the 1.5°C ‘barrier’: Are 1.5°C targets still meaningful? | Erik Landry, Director, Climate Change
• Bridging the ESG data gap: Empowering emerging markets for sustainable infrastructure development | Joss Blamire, Director, Infrastructure