Abstract

The real estate sector accounts for more than a third of global greenhouse gas
emissions and thus offers great potential for carbon abatement. Energy efficient
and green buildings are rapidly transforming the commercial property sector,
and institutional investors can benefit from that transformation through the
value created by the greening of their real estate holdings. This article develops a
global survey for property portfolios, measuring the environmental performance
of listed property companies and private property funds. Based on the objective
set of environmental survey data, we construct an environmental scorecard – the
Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark. The results reported in this article
suggest that the environmental performance of the global property investment
industry can be substantially improved. For institutional investors, the survey
results and the scorecard metrics benchmark the current environmental
performance of their property portfolio, and show the way to improving it.

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